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A quick note before you begin listening.
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This episode was recorded in January and was meant to be a timeless introduction to the
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world of foreign policy that you could listen to 30 years later and still find enlightening.
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I loved the way the episode turned out and I certainly learnt a lot about the way the
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world functions and the motivations and incentives of India, Pakistan, China and the USA on the
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As it's a timeless episode, I kept the release for later and then COVID-19 happened.
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Now this episode works very well as it is and I think it's excellent background to understand
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But the fallout of the pandemic does have immediate implications for foreign policy.
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So I have recorded a special segment on this with my guests Pranay and Manoj, which is
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attached to the end of this episode at around the 1 hour 58 minute mark.
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You can skip to that if you want but I would recommend listening to the whole thing in
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linear fashion as this entire episode was packed with insight from me.
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Sometimes it feels like the planet is going nuts.
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The most powerful country in the world is led by an orange man who posts nutty tweets
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He's fighting with Iran, North Korea also has nukes, the Middle East is in turmoil and
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no one knows what China wants except that you don't want to mess with China.
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India seems to have it all under control with the Prime Minister who seems to travel as
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often as an air hostess.
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But why does he keep talking about Pakistan all the time?
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At this point you stop me and ask, hey Amit, why do we need to look outward?
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There is so much going wrong in India itself.
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Our economy is bungee jumping without a rope and our society seems more and more angry
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Does foreign policy matter?
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host Amit Verma.
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Welcome to the Scene and the Unseen.
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In today's episode, I want to take a comprehensive look at international relations as things
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How does India look at the world?
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How does the world look at India?
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What are our threats and opportunities?
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Through what frames do we look at all of this?
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My guests today are Pranay Kotaswane and Manoj Kevalramani, two outstanding thinkers who
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work at the Takshashila Institution at Bengaluru.
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Both of them have been guests on the show before and I have learned a lot from both
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Some of those episodes will be linked from the show notes.
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But before we begin our conversation, let's take a quick commercial break.
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If you enjoy listening to the Scene and the Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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The Scene and the Unseen has been a labor of love for me.
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I've enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe
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and hopefully yours as well.
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But while the work has been its own reward, I don't actually make much money off the show.
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Although the Scene and the Unseen has great numbers, advertisers haven't really woken
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up to the insane engagement level of podcasts.
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I do many many hours of deep research for each episode, besides all the logistics of
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producing the show myself.
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Scheduling guests, booking studios, paying technicians, the travel and so on.
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So well, I'm trying a new way of keeping this thing going and that involves you.
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My proposition for you is this.
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For every episode of the Scene and the Unseen that you enjoy, buy me a cup of coffee or
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even a lavish lunch, whatever you feel is worth.
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You can do this by heading over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contributing an amount of
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This is not a subscription.
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The Scene and the Unseen will continue to be free on all podcast apps and at sceneunseen.in.
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This is just a gesture of appreciation.
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Help keep this thing going.
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Sceneunseen.in slash support.
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Rani and Manoj, welcome to the Scene and the Unseen.
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Great to be back, Amit.
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So Rani, you were very recently, more recently than Manoj, you were on the Scene and the
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Unseen and we discussed what got you into policy and foreign policy and so on.
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But I don't think I've actually had a chance to talk about that at Manoj, though we've
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done some episodes on China.
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But in general, so why don't you tell me a little bit about how you kind of got interested
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in foreign policy and how it became your thing, so to say.
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So this has to go back like nearly two decades now.
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Yeah, where it goes back to Bollywood dreams being shattered and then a choice to study
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You wanted to be an actor?
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I tried my hand at acting.
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What movies can we see?
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So Manoj tells us that those videos are not available on YouTube, but I really doubt that.
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Have you searched properly?
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So a challenge to all my listeners, kindly find Manoj Ke Varmaani videos.
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I did like some of the most awesome stuff, some of the most, so as I say in Bombay, I
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had a long struggle and I went through what are called bhajan videos and I won a beauty
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pageant in Bombay in my day.
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So yeah, so eventually after that, I sort of moved on.
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I ended up going and studying IR and when I started international relations, it just
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I moved to journalism as opposed to foreign policy per se, but my interest was foreign
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There was very little done in India and particularly at the grade where I started.
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It took a few years once I finally went to China and I worked over there and I came back
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from there and that's when sort of the career in foreign policy, you know, studying China
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So that's say the last five, six years when that sort of evolved, but that's the tragic
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I went through years of journalism, about 12 years, most of them in India, three of
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them in China, and then subsequently moved out of journalism because it just became a
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place from which I needed refuge and therefore I moved to research in foreign policy, particularly
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because that was my interest.
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And to outsiders, it seems like a very dry subject is almost like the grass is gray on
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the other side in this context.
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But you know, when I speak to both of you, I get the sense that you really love your
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You really love foreign policy.
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So did you wake up in the morning and look forward to figuring out the dynamic, how it
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No, it's just things keep happening, right?
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They never let you, your guard is never down because something or the other is happening.
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So you just figure out and learn something new.
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Also, I think, you know, at a certain level, and I think this doesn't operate very consciously,
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but for me, at least at a subconscious level, foreign policy was always sort of one step
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above covering domestic stuff.
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It always felt like, maybe it felt like, you know, that bhar ki cheeze dekh rahe hai, videshi
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cheeze dekh rahe hai, that is much more cooler.
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But it also, I guess, has to do with the fact that, you know, when you go back to studying
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foreign policy, just the importance that Nehru gave to foreign policy, I think that sort
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of also has a sense that, you know, okay, no, this is a bigger deal to cover.
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If you're really smart, you're a strategist, you do all of this.
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If you're a sleazy politician, you do domestic stuff.
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So that's the sort of stuff that I think plays subconsciously.
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Yeah, no, that's a good point, because I've heard that earlier as well, because when you
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discuss foreign policy, it allows you to escape in a sense from what happens in the domestic
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So it's almost an admission that things can't change locally.
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So let's think of a step above, but generally our work, because we deal with public policy,
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it straddles both and there is not much distinction.
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Controversial question, is it simpler than say something like macroeconomics?
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Because I guess someone who's into macroeconomics is dealing with like millions of variables
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and everything is up in the air and it almost feels like they're winging it at times.
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Whereas for you guys, okay, it's more or less a zero sum game and it's a few players.
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And actually, no, I would say both of them are equally similar that both of them are
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voodoo many times because in macroeconomics, unlike in microeconomics, you know, right?
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In macroeconomics, for everything, you can give a justification, right?
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Similarly in foreign policy also, it's the same case.
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People can justify anything and there is very little of outcome irrelevant learning.
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So like if you learn something which happens, it goes against your belief that updation
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of your Bayesian priors happens very less in foreign policy as well.
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You will just justify, Oh yeah, this thing had to happen.
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Taliban went away from Afghanistan.
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I knew it, it would happen.
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You know, this US went away, Russia had come in in 79.
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When US came due to balance of power changing, they went away.
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So there is a lot of such things which happen in like in microeconomics and foreign policy
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And I think one of the reasons is that, you know, there is so much of foreign policy that
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links to domestic politics and policies in other countries that there are so many other
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variables and you don't account for when you're basically looking at the state as one entity
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without looking at the internal dynamics, which is something that a lot of people end
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up doing and that's where it becomes far more complicated.
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So yeah, what he said, I have a good example for that.
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Like for example, whenever you're trying to analyze decision-making of a government, what
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type of models will you apply?
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The basic one, which will apply is rational actor model.
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So you'll treat the state as one unit reactor, which does things in certain ways and, but
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that obviously is not the right model, right?
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You will have to understand better models.
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So there are bargaining models or there are models which look at bureaucratic actor models,
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which look at how institutions within that state perform, right?
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But what happens often in foreign policies, because we don't know much about the other
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state, we try to analyze it as a rational actor model.
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So we can explain anything that China does, for example, through this rational actor model.
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China is doing something in Sri Lanka because you know, this Chinese state is this, yeah.
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You know, it is very, that every action is calculated as a result of something which
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is pursued by one actor in this state, which is not true, right?
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Even in a party state like China, there will be multiple actors who are having their own
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So in foreign policy also, we start off with a rational actor model, but a great analysis
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only comes if you are able to improve that rational actor model with other layers of
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analysis, like bureaucratic actor or bargaining.
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In fact, I'm reminded of an episode I did on the Bangladesh war with Srinath Raghavan.
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And a substantial part of that was about how the US was functioning at that time, where
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they were acting completely incoherently because Nixon and Kissinger believed one thing and
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the state department believed another thing.
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And there was a constant conflict between these.
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And obviously these are only sort of two points, but you know, you might think you're acting
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with a single state, which will act rationally, but you're acting with many different actors
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who have their own interests and incentives.
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And speaking of incentives, you know, because in your role as foreign policy analysts, you
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are expected to explain the world.
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Is there then an incentive to simplify and create simplistic narratives because the world
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in many ways is incredibly complex, you know, and not always so easy to explain, but people
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I mean, I think there is, there is an incentive to do that.
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And there is a, there's also a desire to do that because it's easier to communicate that
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And therefore you end up getting stuck with some of these labels.
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So for example, if you look at what Chinese have been doing with Belt and Road, the narrative
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of, oh, this is debt rap.
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This is well thought out, imposing debt on other people to take over their sovereignty
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It's one of those simplistic narratives, which has caught on hold.
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And as much as now you try to sort of break that saying that, look, it's not necessarily
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that's how that's not necessarily how it's functioning.
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There are so many other complications involved.
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It's not easily bought.
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I mean, from an analyst point of view, yes, there is an incentive to do that because that's
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your instant claim to a headline, but if that's what you desire, then you should be doing
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But if that's not what you desire and you want to get sort of below the sort of surface
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of things, then I think it's, you know, I think that's the eventual sort of bid that
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The newspaper headline will go away within less than 24 hours insight, which is valuable
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sustains over a period of time.
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So as an analyst, that's the choice that you end up having to make, you know, what is it
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And I think that's why, so there exists an incentive, but there is this, I think for
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somebody who wants to understand the world, if you're going in it to try and understand
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the world, I think, or try and understand how foreign policy operates, you want to sort
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of step back and take a look at things better.
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I don't think it's very different Amit compared to any other discipline, for example, in economics
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as well, we'll always try to simplify reality and model reality because you want to rational
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actor itself in economics is a very big concept, right?
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Because by making that assumption, you are able to then see outside that individual.
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Otherwise, you will then be stuck with why is the individual doing right?
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So simplifying reality and building models is the first step, right?
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That's how you build on to your understanding of the world.
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So I think foreign policy is something similar.
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So you build up models to understand the world in better ways.
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You will simplify things and the hope is that you will then apply nuance it as you understand
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But I think the difference between building a theoretical model, which explains certain
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consequences and actions is different as opposed to simplifying reality.
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A theoretical model will help you evaluate or filter through realistic events to try
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and say, well, these are probably the underlying causes and these are probably the underlying
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But actually creating a narrative to simplify what could be very complex actions don't
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A theoretical model will survive.
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I mean, things like in foreign policy, neorealism and all will survive, but they will get updated.
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But the theoretical base of the model will survive because it gives you one way of looking
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Whereas when narratives are created, say for example, the US's role in the Middle East
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is dominantly oil driven by the big mafia, whatever by the big oil lobbies, those sorts
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of narratives sustain themselves, but they might not necessarily explain foreign policy
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A model such as realism as an approach to things might be able to explain to you largely
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why certain actions are happening and why states behave in a certain way.
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In fact, you know, the pundit economy, so to say the talking heads on TV and all of
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that, they have to exude certainty and therefore they have to simplify and this happened because
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of this and blah, blah, blah.
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And there's no space for nuance.
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But however, when you're analyzing something, have you guys internalized probabilistic thinking
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and how hard or easy is that?
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And you know, how difficult is it to avoid the temptation of giving into that and just
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coming to a conclusion about something and moving on?
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So I don't think we have done a lot of work on say probabilistic thinking because you
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need a lot of data to be able to also use some of these things.
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But many talk about interstate relations.
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You don't have that much available.
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But so for example, when we try to talk about things, we try to avoid certainty and certitude
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and the ignorance that comes with certitude, we try to avoid.
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So we try to say even when we are predicting things, we would like to say that, you know,
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these are things which are likely based on our understanding of the world and the model
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that we have developed.
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If things go awry, then we have to update our model.
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That's how we think about it.
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Yeah, I'm sort of a tangent to that is I was recently in a Twitter discussion with somebody
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and we were talking about some events, controversial stuff related to China.
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And the answer that I got was, well, if your answer is that it's complex and that's not
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good enough, you need to have a certain clarity about it.
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And I was like, but it is complex and what are you supposed to do about that?
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So I think that is like this sort of ties into what you asked earlier, right?
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There is a pressure to be certain about certain things.
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But yeah, and at the best that you can do is you can create a model and if your model
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sustains the test of time, that's when you know, you've probably done well.
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Let's move from certainty to clarity, right?
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Now models let you describe frames through which you view the world in any field useful
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because then they give clarity to the way you look at the world.
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And of course, if the frame is wrong, then your clarity could be misconceived clarity.
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But nevertheless, frames are extremely useful.
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So what kind of frames do you have, for example, ask each of you this to look at sort of the
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world, foreign policy, international relations?
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So this is like talking about all the models that exist in IR, but international relations
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discipline itself as some theories, right?
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Like, so there will be a theory of realism.
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So the realism theory says that the most important determinant of anything that happens in the
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So it's about who has more power, the Matsya Naya thing, which even the Cotillion things
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Big fish eat small fish.
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So you have to be the big fish.
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If you are a small fish, you have to ally with other small fish or big fish to win in
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order to resist a big fish from eating.
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And that's a zero sum view.
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So foreign policy is seen in terms of this balancing and bandwagoning.
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And there are other frames as well.
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There was a liberalism school of international relations also, which said that, you know,
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Ultimately, the goal of all foreign policy should be to increase liberal values.
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And as economies get intertwined with each other, certain kinds of values will become
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more popular than others.
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That school was discredited with what things are happening now, right?
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So and then there were other constructivism.
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That was another view, which said that it's not necessarily that states are always going
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The ultimate decisions by states are shaped by the individuals there.
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So as long as you can influence elite opinion in different countries, you might actually
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achieve different outcomes.
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These are like three broad schools of international relations.
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Now, when I look at it, apart from these three, let's look at India, right?
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Indian foreign policy, the frame that we use for looking at foreign policy, the objective
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that we want to think about this is any action that we do in foreign policy.
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Is it leading to the yoga Kshema of Indians, which is, is it bringing yoga Kshema means
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peaceful enjoyment of prosperity?
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So is that leading us to more yoga Kshema or not?
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If it is not, it is a bad foreign policy.
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If it is, it is going in the right direction.
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So you know, we look at that.
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So for example, let me give you an example where it might be controversial.
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So many people say, think that territorial sovereignty or territorial integrity rather
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is the most important idea of any nation state.
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So the view that we come from is it's not all true to say that, you know, if yoga Kshema
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is central to our view, there might be certain cases where you might want to give away some
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territory in exchange of prosperity of more Indians.
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And in fact, there exists a realistic case of that where India exchange some land with
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Bangladesh because there are the second order enclaves within Bangladesh, there is India
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and within India, there are Bangladesh.
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So and those people had, they were almost stateless.
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They couldn't have any services of Indians and Bangladeshis couldn't have services either.
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So we exchanged those lands, we in fact gave away more land than we got in return.
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But that now there is consistency.
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Those people can have a much better life than they had earlier.
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So yoga Kshema is basically what Thomas Jefferson would call the pursuit of happiness, peaceful
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enjoyment of prosperity, peaceful enjoyment of peace is also important.
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Yeah, the means so the means you have the means in the end right there.
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So when you kind of think of the world, you'd once written essay for Prakriti when I was
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editing Prakriti about the new world order and how and you had kind of modified the conventional
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way of thinking and added your own sort of lens to it.
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Tell me a little bit about that because I found it very insightful and fascinating.
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Yeah, so let's look at what this term world order means, right?
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So the world order this I'm taking this definition from Kissinger's book by this name.
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So he describes the world order as a concept held by a region or civilization about the
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nature of just arrangements and the distribution of power thought to be applicable to the whole
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Okay, so this is the definition.
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So if this concept is applicable to the entire world, it is called an international order
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if it applies only to a small region, it is called a regional order.
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Okay, so that is what world orders are two important words in this is just arrangements
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and the second concept is power distribution of power.
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Okay, so this is what the central theme of any world order is.
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Okay, so basically just arrangement ties to this concept of legitimacy.
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Why is legitimacy important?
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Because if you have a set of commonly accepted rules that define the limits of permissible
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power for another state then governing the world is easier, right?
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So for example, when US propagated this idea of democracy and now that was central to many
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of their actions in foreign policy whether it actually led to democracy or not is a different
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thing, but it was in the name of democracy.
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So they build that concept and because they became the most powerful nation state all
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of us think in terms of that same view, right?
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So now democracy all actions of foreign policy are also seen from this frame.
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So that becomes an important part.
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So that is about legitimacy.
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The second part is distribution of power.
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So you will not be able to do any of these things until and unless you have sufficient
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power to actually enforce things on other nations.
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In fact, isn't the notion of just therefore also determined by power balances like it
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the most powerful especially if they are hegemonically powerful like the USA will then define what
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is just as you are saying in the case of democracy.
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Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
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That's why in my definition great powers don't seek just power they seek authority and authority
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is a combination of power and legitimacy.
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So basically once they achieve power, they make certain things which are in their own
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benefit common across the world.
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So the democracy free trade for example, what US thought is important for them are now seen
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as the gold standard by a lot of countries.
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So those became the standards against which all countries started evaluating their own
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So that is the power of so power is important.
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Yeah, power is everything basically in foreign if we see the realism school of international
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affairs, which I think more or less we agree to I think more or less we agree on that.
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I mean I've spoken about all three concepts and what you will see at least in my work
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what you will see is you will see all three of them being reflected that you know, there
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are ways in which you can leverage leaders individuals institutions within a country
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to shape narratives and therefore shape States policy.
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There is a utility obviously to international institutions not just from a cooperative point
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of view, which is where sort of liberal internationalism comes into play, but that's also where power
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I mean the fact that today you have you know, the Chinese wanting to have a specific have
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using UN resolutions reflect Xi Jinping thought or something like that or shared community
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of common destiny is because they see value in it.
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That is how you create authority the fact that they want to end up having the definition
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of universal human rights be altered to reflect certain particularistic conditions of each
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nation so that you know, I can have my own set of human rights.
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Whereas you can have a different set is also where you want to shape sort of these norms
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because these norms also eventually determine where authority lies and you can see this
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currently being played out between the US and the Chinese.
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So I think that all of this sort of has very real-world implications, which is what I wanted
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to sort of get at is that when you apply some of these theories in the real world, you will
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not necessarily see neat distinctions.
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The real world is far more messy.
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So you'll see these things interplaying with each other.
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You will see all of this happening, but power will remain sort of central to all of this.
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It is where and power defined is also economic strength and that translates into military
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power and the rest of it that will essentially define where you stand in this sort of global
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pecking order and how much you're able to influence and the objective of the influence
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like friend has said is you go Shema and that's from our point of view, but if I was to look
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at nice study China, so if you look at from a Chinese point of view, the objective is
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not necessarily yoga Shema.
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The objective is broad objective is to ensure that the Communist Party remains in power
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and maintains its control over so-called dominance of leadership of the Chinese people.
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However, you want to classify the Chinese people not just were in mainland, but who
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are probably even overseas Chinese who are probably even people of Chinese descent living
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in places like Singapore to have some sort of a legitimate authority to be speaking on
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their behalf and governing on their behalf and I think yoga Shema for them is an outcome
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that allows me to maintain my legitimacy, which is very different from how these are
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So if you look at that, that's very different from how we look at from what India's sort
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of foreign policy objective should be what the primary goal of our foreign policy should
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We prefer for different different countries and different different states and I think
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that's where sort of I would draw the distinction between how we look at foreign policy for
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one state or another state and what sort of models can be drawn.
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So yoga Shema need not necessarily be for everybody, but that's what we believe should
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Actually, I mean, that's a perfect point for me to discuss a dilemma that we face while
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discussing both public policy and foreign policy.
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So as you know, when we are talking about the domestic sphere, we generally talk about
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liberalism pluralism freedom of all sorts, which are close to us.
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But when we talk about foreign policy, these principles don't necessarily apply it.
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So in a sense, it is necessary for us to maintain a cognitive dissonance when we are talking
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about domestic policy, we talk about freedom pluralism because that is the moral framework
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of our Constitution and what we want India to also be more and more free liberal open
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But that's not how the international system operates.
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The international system is still much in our what we discussed and hence when we talk
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about international relations, we have to discuss about power about a morality.
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So this is a conflict which exists and you have to try to balance and just thinking about
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like one, you know reason for that obviously would be that from now from the workings of
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society, we know enough to know that all interactions are a positive some game, which is why freedom
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is good and coercion is bad and that's how you society's progress.
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But foreign relations is often looked upon in most of the traditional frames as a zero
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some game where one country will win at the expense of another and do you think then that
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frame needs to be modified because honestly all voluntary interactions between individuals
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leave both people better off that is also the same between countries.
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So is there any way perhaps like is it a vicious cycle of thinking in zero some terms that
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if everyone else does it you have to also and is there than a way of breaking that?
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Yeah, actually people have tried to break it through like we discussed about constructivism
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and other liberalism frames.
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They have been applied but they haven't stood to empirical scrutiny, especially liberalism
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as a way of forward in international relations because you still see nation-states because
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there is no one government nation-states doing whatever it takes to increase their own power
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and they might use that increased power for betterment of their own people more liberalism
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freedom inside their states.
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But when it comes to interstate relations, the reality has been still that it is zero
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some and as a complete aside is also strikes me that I see a similar dissonance in everybody's
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lives not between you know, what if the policies are favor within the country and international
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relations because most people aren't thinking about international relations, but simply
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in terms of how they think of their personal ethics and how they think of political philosophy
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like for example, one passion project that I'm kind of working on is sort of explain
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how like there are two important questions to which people usually have separate answers
#
and the first question is what is a good way for me to live my life?
#
What is a virtuous way for me to live my life?
#
And the second question is how should the state interact with society and most people
#
have separate answers to both of them.
#
For example, in their personal lives, I often tell people including leftist friends of mine
#
that in our personal lives, we're all libertarian.
#
We respect the autonomy of others.
#
We respect their consent.
#
You know, when you and I go out to a restaurant, we won't force each other to eat what we
#
want that person to eat.
#
We won't force the other person to pay for the meal and so on and so forth.
#
But it's different with the state and what I have come to through many years of churn
#
and thinking and changing my mind is that I view both through the same lens, which is
#
the lens of consent and coercion that coercion is bad and you have to respect consent and
#
that if there is something that is wrong for one individual or one group of individuals
#
to do to another, it is also wrong for the state to do it to you.
#
But this is a complete tangent and I think we got on the tangent because you were saying
#
we instead of I so I apologize for that.
#
Let's come to India then in terms of the purpose of foreign policy.
#
What do you think it should be?
#
And you guys are both articulated that you think it should be Yogakshima.
#
But what has it been historically in the past?
#
Like, is there sort of a consensus on this within the foreign policy establishment?
#
Has it been changing over time?
#
Like, you know, you might want to be self-aggrandizing as a nation and project power outside and
#
whatever or you could be insular like China was for the longest time and be happy as long
#
as no one interferes with you or you could care about Yogakshima and say that, you know,
#
our end is the prosperity of our people, peaceful prosperity and whatever gets us that is kosher.
#
So you know, how have those evolved?
#
So I think on the practice side of things, it does Yogakshima has been one of the views
#
so it's not articulated in that way but prosperity of Indians and let's say that foreign policy
#
should actually lead to economic growth, it should help us more Indians becoming prosperous
#
that is sort of being the theme of foreign policy right from independence but there have
#
been other elements to it as well like I said territorial integrity has sometimes come in
#
as an important point of view or extending India's power to other places or some people
#
have also articulated as maintaining India's predominant position in our neighborhood
#
might be an important view.
#
So there have been a mix of these ideas but because we are a democracy, I think this idea
#
of foreign policy should ultimately lead to welfare of Indians is somewhat remained common
#
over the last 50-60 years.
#
I think it has remained common but like Pranayas, there are multiple other strands and at least
#
I mean I won't necessarily go back to the 50-60s I wasn't there but my sense of things
#
at that point of time was that there was a greater interest in influencing global events
#
because that was seen as you said a sense of self-regret and a sense of we have a greater
#
We matter and that's how we matter because when we sort of do these things because you
#
are never going to matter with a country of hundreds of millions of really really poor
#
people it's going to take you a long long time.
#
So that I think was one objective going back to history.
#
I think another objective and which I see more recently is that foreign policy is a
#
tool for domestic legitimacy in terms of just popular support.
#
The idea that the Prime Minister over the last number of years now has gone abroad to
#
say that and his supporters have gone abroad to say things like well have you ever seen
#
India being represented and spoken of so well?
#
No, you've never seen that and that's because of him or his machinery.
#
I think there's a sense that that sense of international the glory that you're getting
#
internationally the big crowds that are coming out there is going to reflect into domestic
#
pride and therefore votes and therefore political legitimacy.
#
I think that's also something that's being used now.
#
That's not to say that it's not necessarily that you're not looking at development of
#
The government also came to power the first and the objective was economic diplomacy is
#
going to be one of the first things and the objective of that is to you know, push India's
#
So I think there's a mix of objectives and a lot of it in the recent past particularly
#
in my recollection the recent part past I don't recollect say even in the 80s through
#
the 90s and even the early 2000s Prime Minister's necessarily going abroad and using your clout
#
abroad or with overseas Indians as something to sell domestically saying this is how proud
#
This is how big India today is at the international stage.
#
The argument may have been that we have growing economy and therefore we are now big and therefore
#
we matter but it was never the case of this individual makes you matter now.
#
So therefore you should be voting for them.
#
In fact earlier when you were talking about how you know with China is not necessarily
#
It's a Communist Party over everything else and just thinking aloud it seems to me a danger
#
that that could even be happened in India where you know, if foreign validation is looked
#
upon for you know, as part of the optics that raise your brand within India itself then
#
that's something dangerous it not need to be just it not need necessarily be at odds
#
with you know, what India's interest is so there is you know, one theory as to why Mr.
#
Modi travels abroad so much which is to escape from the pollution of Delhi.
#
For example, actually the centrality of Pakistan in India's foreign policy is a manifestation
#
on that right because ideally in our view again foreign policy should be about we should
#
just try to ignore Pakistan as much as possible right because you're talking to a least common
#
denominator then you're always going to compare yourself with Pakistan.
#
I mean that would be defeating India's what India's wants itself to be.
#
So as in the recent years what you're seeing is Pakistan again becoming a central part
#
of India's foreign policy which it was moving away like US for example earlier you if you
#
would remember you whenever the US president came to Delhi he also made a trip to Islamabad
#
like that was just the normal operation but over the last 10 years even in the US this
#
had changed right the India and Pakistan were at different levels for the US but now you
#
see again this idea being that we have to do things because Pakistan look at what they
#
are doing because they are doing that why can't we do it you know, so we are comparing
#
ourselves with Pakistan and that is not necessarily leading to Yogakshema of Indians it might
#
lead to better prospects for a particular political party but it might not be good for
#
Yeah the only sort of corollary that I can think of in this context in the recent past
#
is so if you go back to about 10-12 years ago there was this framework of Chindia where
#
China India rising together we'll make Bombay into Shanghai that's sort of a comparison
#
where you are trying to compare yourself and to me that was healthy comparison in some
#
ways because you were trying to look at emulating development at least it's aspirational aspirational
#
but yeah I mean the idea that oh this is where we are going and you know look the globally
#
we're being talked about in comparison with China and whether this is pure now that could
#
have been one way where you could sort of leverage foreign policy for domestic gains
#
saying that look now we're in the conversation at this table today that's shifted completely
#
we're in a completely different table in terms of the conversation but the idea that you
#
know this comparison with Pakistan so you spoke about the US presence previously coming
#
and this happening last year when the Chinese foreign minister was supposed to come in September
#
apparently we refused him basically saying you're coming via Pakistan and we're unhappy
#
with that so come again another time and don't come via Pakistan wow that's a very silly
#
tantrum yeah and he came in December so and not by Pakistan so yeah so I think it still
#
is raw nerve internationally in that sense but domestically it probably pays political
#
dividends quite significantly so you keep continuing to use that so that's a trade-off
#
and if you care much more about your domestic whatever than the Jogakshama of your people
#
so just one point related to that important by point of peaceful enjoyment of prosperity
#
is economic growth right the growth is important so for a long time like Nitin and all of us
#
also talk about what is India's foreign policy towards US it is 8% economic growth what is
#
India's foreign policy towards Pakistan it is 8% economic growth similarly for against
#
many countries it is about economic growth right as long as we are able to do that and
#
we use foreign policy to further enhance our growth we are on the right track otherwise
#
we are going in the wrong direction and I want to elaborate on the moral importance
#
of economic growth like if for example you agree that a democracy your dharma is to uplift
#
your people fact to remember is that every one person rise in GDP gets two million people
#
out of poverty a figure which I'd first learned from your colleague Nitin Pai in fact and
#
therefore there is a moral imperative to growth therefore when your growth slips from seven
#
percent to four percent the opportunity cost of that is six million people who are still
#
in poverty who would not have been how is that not something to get your blood boiling
#
how is that any less than you know the other humanitarian crimes carried out by this regime
#
or that totally agree so that's why when we talk about foreign policy it is with this
#
frame right let's talk about growth and how we can use foreign policy to increase our
#
prospects and bring prosperity for all Indians so I have a question about India which is
#
that however foreign policy may sometimes be used as a tool of optics by the party in
#
power is it basically fundamentally run by a deep state kind of apparatus in the sense
#
that is it just the dip the your external affairs ministry or whatever where they have
#
their carders and they have everything and they run it and therefore policy will be more
#
or less consistent and stable through different political regimes and you know politicians
#
may use foreign policy for a little window dressing here and there but it's really the
#
deep state which is handling things for example exemplified perhaps by the appointment of
#
Mr. Jaishankar who's you know a courier foreign affairs bureaucrat who is now in in charge
#
of the external affairs ministry at the time of recording this on Jan 24th it's a strange
#
world one never knows so is that the case or do politicians have a greater impact no
#
I would say I'll give a few examples to illustrate right just look at what Manmohan Singh's government
#
did with the US on the nuclear deal right they staked their government's position for
#
that particular foreign policy action and it did have rewards like they get that single
#
decision led to India and US relations being taken to a different level so political will
#
political decision making matters a lot just like in any other foreign policy so basic
#
tenets might remain the same just like in economic policy broadly everyone in the government
#
also realizes that economic growth is important but how would you want to reach that economic
#
growth differs right now this government is increasing import duties in the hope of saying
#
that growth will be important bizarrely ignorant so the actual practice might in fact be very
#
different so even in foreign policy that's the case so even though people recognize that
#
the ultimate goal is more prosperity for Indians and but the practice is different and that
#
depends on the political will what the government of that day and age things so I mean I think
#
if you go back to history and if you look at it when India became independent the political
#
class obviously had the dominant role in foreign policy making I mean Nehru ran India's foreign
#
policy over time obviously the bureaucracy develops in the bureaucracy gets institutionalized
#
in certain values in certain sense of what our interests are and what our approaches
#
are subsequently making sort of pivoting is very difficult because so there that's where
#
I think sort of deep state in the sense sort of fixes in and if you look at if you listen
#
to former bureaucrats former IFS folks former ambassadors you get that sense that there
#
is a certain viewpoint that they come from and to take some of those leaps and one of
#
the leaps was what I mentioned which was you know the nuclear deal it was a very very difficult
#
process to go through that and there is a lot of there's a lot of not just political
#
but also bureaucratic sort of pushback against something like that but that's made and that's
#
again with the political class sort of intervenes I think today what you see is that there is
#
an institutionalized sense and I think this has to go back to the nuclear deal in that
#
period of time over 10-12 years now the sense that fund actually not even 10-12 years ago
#
I think this goes back to the late 90s after we conducted the nuclear tests and the subsequent
#
dialogue again this is a political level dialogue happening between strobe Talbot and just one
#
thing and that shapes narratives and then it takes us still about 10 years after that
#
to do this nuclear deal finalize it and that's a dialogue happened through regime so which
#
is interesting the dialogue began with just one thing and strobe Talbot and that was the
#
dialogue with sort of normalized things which is when Bill Clinton visited India in 2000
#
after that and that was a big deal and we had we sanctions were placed against India
#
and then Bill Clinton comes to India eventually subsequently it takes about five years where
#
we end up announcing this possibility of a nuclear deal and even this possibility of
#
the nuclear deal in the US is there is a pushback because this is George Bush wanting to do
#
it and us taking on the opportunity with that but there is a pushback in the US also which
#
led to therefore that one two three agreement going through so much such a long discussion
#
even in India there is resistance and that's why it takes you eventually so long when you
#
reach the agreement subsequently if you see whatever subsequent governments have sort
#
of felt whatever sort of the environments have been there have been certain sort of
#
constants in how we've approached it we've moved closer to the US we've tried to balance
#
the Chinese and we've tried to also figure out a way where we can maintain economic growth
#
in whatever way we can and that's been sort of broadly our priorities without trying to
#
get to controversial we've tried to sort of keep somewhere equidistant where we don't
#
get caught up in controversies managing our relationship with Iran and the US pressure
#
on Iran and all those things to me part of that is political but part of that is also
#
how the bureaucracy sort of seeks stability because you get certain values get entrenched
#
certain opportunities certain senses getting entrenched and then it's very difficult you
#
need something where the political establishment sort of pushes hard bangs on heads and then
#
you sort of push through something which can be transformative so if today you were to
#
ask somebody who feels that India must pivot the world is changing drastically India must
#
pivot towards a some sort of alliance with the US you will find a lot of inertia within
#
the bureaucracy you will find a lot of former ambassadors and bureaucrats saying no no no
#
that's going too far we can talk we can do this and we can sort of find some sort of
#
a you know modus vivendi but we don't necessarily want to go down that road so because and that's
#
because you're institutionalized in certain thought processes about risk-taking about
#
where our interests lie and how our interests are sort of being shaped by the events but
#
you won't necessarily anticipate it because you're institutionalized in those things so
#
I think there is a deep state which gets entrenched over a period of time there are points of
#
time in India's history where politicians have sort of dominated this particular foreign
#
policy framework yet I think for in much of post Nehruvian era it's been the bureaucracy
#
which has driven things there have been moments where the politicians have sort of taken charge
#
but much of the time it's I think it's a bureaucracy that's maintained things the way they are
#
so would it be fair to say that there is therefore a status quo bias at play that among bureaucrats
#
that the safest thing is to do nothing because nothing can go wrong and you can't be blamed
#
for doing you know the usual whatever it is that you do and therefore if any drastic actions
#
or big changes from the past have to be done they have to necessarily come from politicians
#
yes I would agree with that so there is a very famous quote in international which gets
#
misused a lot is about there are no permanent friends or enemies only permanent interest
#
now let me corrupt it further and say that interests are semi-permanent okay their interests
#
also change but they are semi-permanent so that's why you will see the status quo bias
#
in the sense that largely interest of India across these have also remained the same and
#
they have changed not with every government but they have changed over say 20-30 years
#
because you know our interest will change if when will they change when your entire
#
power in the international order also changes right let's say if you have acquired more
#
economic power or more military power you have that many more instruments to achieve
#
something right let's say you want to ensure that Indians who are working in the Gulf are
#
protected but if you don't have Navy to back that up there's not much you can do you will
#
do status quo you will just say okay have good relations with all countries in West
#
Asia balance all of them yeah but that's pretty much it right but now imagine India is a much
#
more powerful country in terms of the economic wherewithal and also in terms of military
#
strength then we can deploy things there we can also have relationships with other countries
#
which will ensure that in times of emergency Indians are repatriated in a much better way
#
right so the dependence is on our own power and if we have more power it might not necessarily
#
be status quo we can do many more things we can deliver pain to countries which act against
#
us and we can also provide benefits to countries which act according to us and and what also
#
strikes me here is that using the realist frame and putting power at the center of everything
#
means that India is playing multiple games at the same time like on one hand you have
#
the US as this large power and India has a history of not being particularly close to
#
them during the Cold War and so on so you know there is this constant game you're playing
#
where you're trying to sort of maintain national pride but also get closer to them and make
#
them friendlier towards you and at the same time within the region you are the big boy
#
in South Asia and you want to sort of use that to consolidate your influence and at
#
the same time you're very aware that China is doing things in your neighborhood in the
#
Indian Ocean and you also have therefore the imperative of at least balancing that and
#
looking after your interests how has Indian thinking on all of these and we can go one
#
by one and not necessarily try to do a broad sweep one by one if we talk about our attitude
#
towards the USA towards China towards the region how has that sort of evolved over the
#
last 22 years so let's look at US first probably so on the US there was this article that an
#
interview that K Subramaniam gave for Prakriti itself long back where he articulated that
#
if the world is going to be such that US is the number one and China is number two in
#
the world it is in India's interest to ensure that US is number one so that was sort of
#
his articulation but so broadly Indian foreign policy has taken that trend that US is important
#
even though there is very strong anti-Americanism in our because of our previous history Cold
#
War closeness with Russia and all that but look at India right our median age is 27 most
#
of the people are born after liberalization so and we all have had you know even at a
#
cultural level US has been closed right many people in Bangalore have worked for US companies
#
including me so there is that anti-Americanism I think is slowly fading away and that is
#
a recognition from the US side as well because the US game big game is US is worried about
#
China and it realizes that to counter China it needs a player middle power which is of
#
significant strength which at the current stage only is India so now you see a convergence
#
of both US wanting seeing India at a different level than other players like Pakistan and
#
India also moving away from that anti-American attitude which existed twenty thirty years
#
away so over the last ten years there has been more convergence and US India relationships
#
have been much better than they were twenty thirty years ago and is there a sort of balancing
#
to be done in the sense that we also want good relations with China but is there a sort
#
of balancing in the sense that if they see us get too close with the US they might get
#
Yeah I mean so there was a news report last week which spoke about a Trump staffer I think
#
it was Scaramucci but I can't remember which Trump staffer but a former Trump staffer essentially
#
saying that when Modi met Trump Trump asked him Trump they were talking about China and
#
Trump sort of made a remark saying it's not like China is next to you right it's not like
#
it's not on the border with you so it is on the border with us of course and so it's not
#
just the fact that China is a large neighbor which is next to us which has enjoys a massive
#
asymmetry with us China's per capita GDP today is over ten thousand dollars five times more
#
than us its capacity to use its economic resources to create military power is far far superior
#
than ours so it enjoys a massive asymmetry from us.
#
Currently we've got this long pending border dispute which continues to be an irritant
#
sadly China is one of our biggest trading part our trade with the Chinese is today at
#
ninety two ninety three billion dollars a year there's increasing Chinese investment
#
coming in India so that's an opportunity in the last three four years has been about nine
#
ten billion dollars worth of Chinese investment coming in largely in India's tech sector but
#
apart from that also in construction and other things so there's an opportunity that it presents
#
but there's also threat that the Chinese present which is the fact that they are not just an
#
asymmetrically large neighbor sitting next door to us with the border dispute from us
#
they also have a very close relationship with Pakistan which is a fundamental irritant for
#
India in its trajectory to grow further as long-standing hostility with the Chinese have
#
sort of furthered by helping develop Pakistan's weapons nuclear industry and it's furthering
#
that also right now because it's also investing in Pakistan's Navy right now and as that sort
#
of develops it creates more problems of India because I mean everybody remembers the Masood
#
Azhar saga where the Chinese constantly supported Masood Azhar's the not listing of Masood Azhar
#
as a UN designated terrorist so there are these fundamental contradictions that we have
#
with China there's an opportunity there and there's a threat there and my sense is that
#
what we should be doing and what we are trying to do although we're not necessarily doing
#
as well as we could have is to try and not just balance it in terms of our relationship
#
with America and also trying to invest in our domestic capacities because that's fundamentally
#
what is going to be needed to deter the Chinese so you deserve a four-step thing that we need
#
to do we need to engage with them we don't necessarily engage with them well our engagements
#
have been at leader levels yes we do engage you know before even Modi was meeting Xi
#
Jinping for informal summits and sipping coconuts you know there were meetings between Indian
#
leaders and Chinese leaders I mean Manmohan Singh and Hu Jintao met a number of times
#
and that's when sort of the big bonhomie was happening so that's one thing but also at
#
sort of society levels governmental levels institutional levels within governments at
#
different levels we need to be engaging with them because we know we don't necessarily
#
understand how that system operates and a classy example is the engagements that are
#
armed forces the fact that India and China have been talking about setting up a hotline
#
a crisis de-escalation hotline between the armed forces for years now at least publicly
#
this government said so two years ago and it just announced this month that we are in
#
a position where a hotline will be set up and the reason that you couldn't set this
#
hotline up is because India said we have the Director General of military operations that
#
person will be in charge who is your equivalent at that side and neither could we neither
#
could they identify the equivalent so just this sort of sense of lack of understanding
#
of each other's systems and sort of being able to harmonize that so we need to engage
#
with them we also need to balance them which is what we are doing with the US which is
#
what we are doing when we partner with Japan with Australia this idea that we are building
#
up this quadrilateral group which is not an alliance but some sort of a loose coming together
#
of like-minded countries most important to this is not the fact that we have these countries
#
working with us but the fact that we work with them to develop our own capacity our
#
own military capacity and we sort of gradually taking steps to do that in terms of deterrence
#
the capacity building will work nuclear weapons are an important part of the deterrence but
#
also the fact that we need to be able to bolster our border defenses we need to be able to
#
build infrastructure we need to be able to spend on our Navy and for all of this our
#
economy is fundamental and the last bit over there in terms of this framework of engagement
#
keep balancing deterrence is collaboration and that's where I sort of tie in the economy
#
the Chinese today are massively capital-rich they want to spend money they want better
#
returns India can potentially offer a market where they can get better returns we've not
#
been able to attract the kind of investment although there's eight and nine billion that
#
I've said about but there's much more investment from the Chinese that could come into dumb
#
infrastructure which hasn't come in they're doing this around the world but they're not
#
doing this in India we should be trying to attract that money in and that requires regulatory
#
clarity in India so that's where we need to collaborate with them not just on infrastructure
#
but also maybe on said digital technologies talking to them about cyber governance in
#
these sorts of things talking to them about data protection which are all going to be
#
normal which are going to be shaped internationally and we need to work with them on these things
#
to be able to collaborate where we can leverage what we can to be able to then build a capacity
#
and deter them so yes while we build a relationship with the US this is a neighbor on our border
#
which we need to manage well and this is a framework through which we can manage them
#
I just want to tie that in into the US India question so broadly the way I see it is India's
#
US relationship there are three schools of thought okay one is a purely a retaliatory
#
school of thought which says why should India do anything to the US because US keeps supporting
#
Pakistan still it does still supports the Pakistani military it gives f-16s to them
#
and all that right so that's a retaliatory school in nature it is very low on realism
#
because it is not taking into account what US can do to India right the benefits it can
#
give that is one school of thought the second school of thought is purely bandwagoning which
#
I told you about that we should try to ensure that India if US is the number one and China's
#
number two US should be number one we should try to prolong that the third school of thought
#
is what Manoj was talking about and what we sort of believe in about India trying to be
#
a swing power basically India's capability should be that it should be able to deliver
#
pain to an adversary if it does not act according to our interest and it should be able to deliver
#
benefits if it does so that is how we should look at US and China as well okay and so issue
#
by issue we can decide where we want to be on right so it is called like another analogy
#
for this is we shouldn't be in anyone's camp but we can be in different tents at different
#
times so you could be on for example on climate change India could have more close relationship
#
with the China but on certain other things US is more important for India right so it
#
requires a balance we don't need India is a big enough power to be able to do that if
#
you ask this question to a small nation state it's very tough for them to do any of these
#
balancing because their own power is less but because India is a significant power and
#
we hope it remains with growing economic strength then its ability to do this balancing be in
#
different tents at different times will improve over time and it also strikes me when you
#
were talking about deterrence against China it also strikes me that perhaps a stronger
#
deterrent than nuclear bombs is a strong economy because then their incentives because you
#
know they make so much money from our economy that their incentive is to keep us healthy
#
but that doesn't work for Pakistan so while we need carrots with China perhaps these kind
#
of positive some carrots we need sticks with Pakistan would that be a fair characterization
#
so I'd say that we need a bit of both with China we need to be able to have the capacity
#
and display the resolve to be able to inflict pain but we need carrots because it is beneficial
#
to us also and the fact that over the last 60 65 years we've been able to manage the
#
border tensions without any major incidents the Chinese have not sort of protruded inside
#
India they've not even sought to there have been differences which cause incursions in
#
those sorts of things but there's nothing that's been large-scale and there's nothing
#
that tells us that there will be something you know at a massive scale going forward
#
likewise with India India has not tried to push through sort of established lines apart
#
from I mean as much as we keep reporting Chinese border incursions they do the same thing Indian
#
border incursions so that's a perception issue and that happens yes there's also it's but
#
the fact is that it's also a pain point for us which the Chinese tend to leverage also
#
so it's not just innocent perception it's also thought out sort of approach to this in
#
terms of carrots yes we need carrots I think this is one place where sort of we in the
#
office tend to have a discussion about is that can these carrots influence Chinese policy
#
what evidence has shown us that in certain cases it can in certain cases it won't so
#
for example when the Chinese ended up entering into a sort of conflict with the Japanese
#
this phase of tension starting from 2012 onwards over the disputed islands between the two
#
countries you ended up realizing that the Chinese were willing to bear economic costs
#
whether it was to Japanese businesses in China or whether it was sort of dealing with cutting
#
off ties sort of restricting hurting Chinese exports and all those sorts of things they
#
were willing to deal with economic costs in the case of the US right now and sort of tensions
#
between the Americans and the Chinese what you're seeing is that they're again willing
#
to bear economic costs for strategic objectives yet when those economic costs start to hurt
#
the stability of the party that's when it becomes far more important so it might not
#
necessarily be a case where a certain large certain set of large industry sort of lobbies
#
can get together and influence the government in China like they could probably in the US
#
or probably in India to alter policy soften policy or do something like that but when
#
those industries are critical to survival for the Communist Party you'll end up seeing
#
them sort of altering course it might not just be sort of your the profit margins being
#
hurt badly so I think that is what we need to keep in mind when we try to take if our
#
carrots are the purpose of the carrots is to sort of try and shift policy over a period
#
of time it has to be focused with sort of very clear sort of precision that what are
#
you looking at where are you targeting it might not necessarily be sufficient just because
#
you're a large enough market where you can be where they are making hundred billion dollars
#
a year that might not essentially be sufficient so there may be a lot more that needs to be
#
done yeah I look at it from like an insurance policy rate you need an insurance when things
#
go wrong right similarly I articulate what India's policy towards China should be in
#
two parts one is what Manoj said about part one we need yoga Shema it's in our national
#
interest that there are more investments there is peace on the border so whatever requires
#
to be done with China on that we should do we should allow Chinese investments in a lot
#
of at least the dumb infrastructure in India definitely a yes right but we also need an
#
aggressive China insurance policy so what if because China's recent movements have been
#
in Maldives Nepal Doklam are quite indicative that it is ready to take openly hostile relationship
#
with its neighbors not just India it has been the case with me so we need at least some
#
instruments to be able to deliver pain to China if it tries this right so for example
#
some things the insurance premium for this policy would include a variety of measures
#
for example establishing at least contacts with key members of the World Uighur Congress
#
for example because that is a pain point for them shifting the focus of our act East and
#
look East policy to just one country Vietnam for example because it is a country which
#
also has a historic problem with China in its neighborhood third offering Trump deals
#
that can actually deepen the US India engagement and fourth actually sponsoring studies that
#
puncture the Chinese leaders do no wrong narrative because that's a very strong thing everything
#
in China is planned and everything they do is a success leader is never wrong not sounds
#
familiar Indian listeners so these are just this is not a comprehensive list by any means
#
but these are some things which we can develop our strength in so that if things go wrong
#
with China we at least have well developed crafted instrument yeah I think the only the
#
one thing that I would add to this is you know our relationship with Taiwan the fact
#
that we've not really been able to leverage that relationship at all which in which apart
#
from just as an insurance policy with regard to China is also useful from the point of
#
view our own technological development I'm given that we want to talk about indigenizing
#
semiconductors and all of that we need to work with the Taiwanese and I don't think
#
we've done enough I mean I we just had elections in Taiwan and for whom I had put out on social
#
media that it would be nice to see the Indian government put out a statement saying that
#
you know congratulations well you know in good elections and you know congratulations
#
on peaceful transfer of power and just as generic as that without even using the word
#
president side because we don't recognize Taiwan as a state but just congratulating
#
them when the Australians can when the Americans can why can't we it might it will love the
#
Chinese of course it'll love the Chinese they won't take you for granted yeah they won't
#
take you for granted and so I don't see why we don't do that and why we've also sort
#
of become far more soft on Tibet these are complicated issues for the Chinese that are
#
going to remain complicated for the next at least for the next decade plus as I was going
#
to be there for a longer period of time but given that the Dalai Lama is aging and his
#
health hasn't been the best Tibet's going to be a complicated issue for the Chinese
#
I don't know how much you've done to sort of nurture some of these pain points I don't
#
think we've done sufficient in fact what we've done in the last few years is that we've
#
actually rolled back some of the pressure that we apply on this so when you say nurture
#
the pain points you're saying keep it alive as an issue yes so they are wary of messing
#
too much with you on other fronts because you could mess with them on this front basically
#
to me the fact is that the fact that we are no longer even issuing statements to any regard
#
tells you of the fact that you I mean I don't know what capacity we'd have in Tibet if we
#
have any I don't the fact that we are no longer even talking about it tells you that we probably
#
have no capacity if you had some capacity you would talk about it because empty talk
#
is otherwise useless so I presume that we've not nurtured that capacity and if you've not
#
done that therefore we are not talking so I think we should be looking to do some of
#
these things actually we're going the other direction because Pakistan has become again
#
important for this government the opportunity cost of that is that we are not going to be
#
looking at China with such with all these instruments you're not going to develop them
#
in fact we are going to need China on our hand to take on Pakistan and for just the
#
case of that Masood as a listing is a classic case because it is so important to us we want
#
China's support for that D listing and all cannot happen so we are going the other direction
#
but by making Pakistan the focus of our foreign policy and we shall make Pakistan the focus
#
of our conversation after we come back commercial break if you're listening to the scene in
#
the unseen it means you like listening to audio and you're thirsty for knowledge that
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welcome back to the scene in the unseen I'm chatting with Pranay Kutasane and Manoj Kewal
#
Romani on foreign policy and we've sort of been talking about how India looks at first
#
the US and then China and now Pakistan and Pranay I remember a couple of years back if
#
my memory serves me right we actually did an episode on why China's renewed interest
#
in Pakistan could actually be a good thing for India and not a threat yeah we did that
#
with regards to what China was doing in CPEC etc yeah I remember that so my thing about
#
Pakistan and India's relationship with Pakistan is yeah we need to move away from what we
#
are doing move away from that focus and defocus actually Pakistan even when we are talking
#
about the subcontinent so there are for example Bangladesh is a country we should be really
#
investing our subcontinent policy for right all our energy should be that because it is
#
a big country it has it is our largest export for our two-wheeler market now for example
#
and there are a lot of tourists which come from Bangladesh to India significant number
#
so economy is also doing economic capital GDP is more than that of Pakistan now so there
#
are lots of good things and we need Bangladesh because we need to be able to the connectivity
#
between India's northeast part and the other parts of India is quite weak and we need Bangladesh
#
to help us get through Bangladesh to say Mizoram and Tripura right and Bangladesh is very important
#
we have done trials also of moving goods through that so Bangladesh is important so actually
#
my thing about Pakistan is just keep an eye on the Pakistani military jihadi complex which
#
we have spoken about and as long as we have enough capability to avoid the worst things
#
that Pakistani military jihadi complex does to us the foreign policy idea should think
#
of other things and not Pakistan I agree with that completely I'm just going to slightly
#
rephrase it I think our security policy can deal with Pakistan because I mean when you
#
engage with folks in the Indian Armed Forces the one thing that they'll tell you is that
#
we get that we need to reorient towards China the new army chief says we are doing some
#
sort of rebalancing and the balancing is to correct historical issues where we are balancing
#
towards the northern frontier yet when you engage with people in the Armed Forces what
#
they'll tell you is that what do you do there's a constant barrage from that side so how do
#
you sort of reorient it's a difficult thing to reorient it's actually it makes sense to
#
us also but how do you do it practically so and I think the difference there is that you
#
know you get your security policy needs to take into account what you need to do to deal
#
with the threats that emerge from the military jihadi complex the problem is when that gets
#
transported into your domestic narrative into your foreign policy priorities and that starts
#
to defeating or achieving petty diplomatic victories which really are of no consequence
#
and I put Masoodar's listing in that particular category for probably domestic purposes it
#
really makes no sense the fact that we are investing that much foreign policy capital
#
in these things in diplomatic capital which is terribly limited I mean India's diplomatic
#
core is very limited the ability the amount of money that we spent on our diplomacy is
#
very limited compared to the Americans the Chinese the folks that you want to be compared
#
with or you know the folks with whom you want to be playing this great game are sort of
#
10 15 times more spending more than you their capacity is far greater than you and you're
#
wasting your limited capacity on something as petty as this which is not really going
#
to get you any significant tangible outcomes that's where I think the problem is so as
#
a security policy yes you need to reorient your Armed Forces in a certain way you need
#
to make sure that you have the capacity to deal with the threats that emerge but from
#
foreign policy perspective you need to be looking at something far broader of which
#
says things like Bangladesh or which say things like if you're worried about the Chinese having
#
greater influence in your neighborhood what exactly are you doing about it what sort of
#
connectivity project if connectivity is what they are selling and if you're saying that
#
your neighborhood is worried about an infrastructure deficit and that's what they're selling you
#
might not meet them dollar for dollar but you have other advantages you can work with
#
other partners you've tried to but again the end of the day do you have the capacity to
#
deliver those projects maybe that's where your sort of policy should be oriented towards
#
then what can we do to actually get some of these outcomes that we need as opposed to
#
focusing on this one lost cause and making that the priority of a foreign policy and
#
you know people often it almost feels natural to be so obsessed with Pakistan because they
#
were once I mean we were once one country now they are our neighbor however Pranay you
#
have this concept of what you call multiple neighborhoods and in many of the idea being
#
that we inhabit many neighborhoods simultaneously and in most of them Pakistan is not a neighbor
#
they're a very distant nation kindly explained concept.
#
Yeah so my idea was when we use this word neighbor we look at it from a geographic lens
#
right and in Indian foreign policy also the narrative is that India can't do anything
#
until and unless it has great relationships with all its neighbors and the geography I
#
think that is quite unreasonable no other no country in the world has good relationships
#
with all its neighbors and only then it expands to other countries like I mean US and Mexico
#
also had problems and US and Cuba still have problems right so it's unreasonable to say
#
So my thinking was that we'd geography is just one axis of looking at neighbors in fact
#
India's multiple neighbors for example technology wise India now has neighbors in China in Europe
#
and US are India's technological neighbors you know then economic wise the West Asia
#
is our neighbor for many things even US again for the services economy that we are right
#
so the idea is that we should come out of this frame that we are we can't do anything
#
until and unless we have great relationship with every South Asian country right so let's
#
look at beyond that we inhabit multiple neighborhoods and each of these should be looked differently
#
sometimes government has also articulated this policy in terms of extended neighborhood
#
but they again look at it geographically that India's closed neighborhood is Indian
#
subcontinent beyond that there is a wider Iran would be an extended level to neighbor
#
then but I am thinking just geography is just one accelerate and geography is not necessarily
#
the most important thing I mean geography is destiny only if we think it is destiny
#
in which case it's a self-fulfilling prophecy so we need to look at all these neighborhoods
#
and how do we interact with each of them and we can achieve more in one neighborhood without
#
necessarily conquering or having great relationship with everyone in another neighborhood that
#
was the idea so now my question is and this will be a very newbie question for guys like
#
you so kindly forgive me but I think many of my listeners will share my curiosity that
#
what are the mechanics of foreign policy like when we talk about foreign policy most people
#
are thinking to external affairs ministers are sitting down with their teams over this
#
you know nice in this nice conference room and there are flags in the background and
#
so and so but what are the nuts and bolts like what doesn't you mentioned our foreign
#
policy core what is this core how many you know what is their training are they lifelong
#
civil servants or are they generalists who are brought in from other departments and
#
if I mean I know there's something called the Indian Foreign Services for example so
#
how does it and does that have a culture and a thinking and an ideology of its own how
#
does it evolve and you know when what's going on right now between India and China we know
#
there's no top-level meeting happening right now but what is happening you know are the
#
governments communicating on a daily basis what are the sort of movements that happen
#
yeah so I would say there are there is economic diplomacy there is public diplomacy so there
#
are various levels of but like who carries this out like economic diplomacy is it the
#
finance ministry and the foreign ministry collaborating or yeah so there there is that's
#
a good question see economic diplomacy is a mix of union governments and a bit of state
#
governments also having the role for example remember when Narendra Modi was the CM of
#
Gujarat vibrant Gujarat yeah and there was a lot of things with China and trying to establish
#
investments from China so if you look at economic diplomacy per se you have largely the instrument
#
of this is still the IFS so people who are trained they are diplomats also do the role
#
of on the economic front but politically now even states are getting involved so what they
#
do is every state almost every state in India has this investor summit one gala event every
#
year where they'll call people from across worlds and the companies to come and invest
#
here even the CM's go across to many countries now I remember 2016 the Madhya Pradesh CM
#
was in Washington DC for a day and saying you know come and invest in Madhya Pradesh
#
so that happens but largely the bureaucratic instrument which carries out economic diplomacy
#
is still the IFS I have an idea on that that we should actually state should be able to
#
have direct relationships on the economic front and they should be able to bypass IFS
#
maybe they can fund a chair in the embassy in Washington DC which is funded by say Karnataka
#
or Maharashtra and they pursue their own independent economic diplomacy for their own state it happens
#
in other countries so for example Australia we are in Bangalore and there are there's
#
Victoria there are other states of Australia which have a presence here apart from the
#
presence of the Australian government federal government so that happens that is what I
#
would like to see but currently it is the instrument is still IFS when I look at it
#
a little bit so let's just go from the point of view of who's in China right now we've
#
got embassies we've got missions established over there so you've got the ambassador you've
#
got counselor officers you've got people dealing with different portfolios in that embassy
#
so that's your first point of contact in that country and that's the same thing with any
#
other country and that's essentially your IFS score which is doing what it's doing the
#
IFS code if I'm I could be wrong here but my numbers from what I recall is about 1200
#
to 1500 people which is for a country of this size is quite small in comparison if I recall
#
China's correctly was about seven and a half eight thousand or ten thousand around about
#
that it might have changed in a couple of years and for the US it's around fifteen thousand
#
and these are rough sort of numbers that I recall reading a couple of years ago so you
#
can see that capacity wise there's this massive difference there's also the amount of money
#
that you're spending the Chinese sort of raised double the amount that they were spending
#
and again it's very difficult to calculate total spends because how do you estimate it
#
is it salary is it what you're spending on events is it what you're spending on embassies
#
or is it also certain other events that you're doing because diplomacy is not just about
#
what the foreign bureau foreign ministry bureaucrats are doing it's also about necessarily say
#
when Neeti Ayog meets with the National Development Reform Council over there Commission over
#
there and they have a conversation about how do you facilitate investment cross-border
#
investment on both sides that's part of your economic diplomacy and it doesn't necessarily
#
have IFS guys involved they may be working through the IFS in some way or the other because
#
you need to get people in and you need to actually get some degree of harmony between
#
different institutions but it's these guys who are actually pursuing an agenda likewise
#
when say health ministries talk or when you sort of establish a dialogue on health on
#
certain things when you're talking on climate it might not necessarily be the IFS guys who
#
are taking the lead it might be different institutions are doing it but the IFS will
#
be involved when you're talking on visas and student exchanges while your education ministry
#
in India might be involved also your home ministry may be involved because the home
#
ministry might be worried about certain people coming in from the point of view of espionage
#
or those sorts of things and they might want to block certain things so it's multiple institutions
#
that will be involved driven predominantly by well in this administration driven predominantly
#
by the PMO and sort of executed by the Foreign Service by DMEA but there are multiple institutions
#
that merit multiple layers this is happening of which one sort of other layer distinct
#
layer is para diplomacy which Pranay was talking about which is where states do certain things
#
that is something that we actually argue for like Pranay said that you know if it might
#
be too radical for an Indian government to sort of say that well states can establish
#
their own missions but at least states should be doing much more because often say in relationships
#
like India and China where you end up in a situation that even sort of the smallest steps
#
that you take forward can get pushed back and or industry might end up saying that where
#
we don't necessarily want to get Chinese money here or we don't necessarily want to cut these
#
deals because the next thing you know there's tension between Delhi and Beijing over the
#
border and our business goes for a toss those sorts of things happen because you're dealing
#
through the center once you start dealing independently there's a lesser chance that
#
happening particularly if you're going through your state governments in order that you might
#
still have those fears but you might get certain assurances from the state government saying
#
that behind you you can do this so I think somewhere the states need to take a greater
#
role in that and that sort of para diplomacy needs to happen people to people engagement
#
again it states that need to play a role the central government can say yes we're going
#
to facilitate visas but it's actually the state government that probably might decide
#
that you know what this is a destination which might be really interesting for Chinese visitors
#
because there is a history for China or for American visitors because there's a history
#
here and let's tailor the experience to attract this kind of visitor and you do that I mean
#
the West does that right and you when you go to London today you go for a holiday stores
#
like Harrods has special Chinese signage and all of that and you're doing that because
#
you see that there's a revenue stream and those two that's a store doing it but a city
#
can also do it city can put up city can create an app which makes which ensures that fs tourists
#
from say a heavy spending country let's assume Japan is coming to India they can access information
#
in Japanese if they can't access in English so those are two things execution the states
#
have to do and that's where they can become part of this broader thing but yeah so that's
#
how I would classify the sort of machinations of foreign policy as a whole at any given
#
point of time there are multiple things happening the armed forces play a role in it there are
#
delegations coming back and forth which have foreign policy implications and this is a
#
continuous process so this sort of engagement is continuous and it should be continuous
#
because if you keep snapping this over a period of time you don't end up building the institutional
#
memory of how do you deal with crisis when they are and we are talking about diplomacy
#
but foreign policy will include other things as well like there will be intelligence which
#
happens then there will be even defense policy right so there will be military attaches for
#
example will be stationed at important missions abroad they look at the military side of things
#
so if we talk about foreign policy it includes these elements as well but I'm we were narrowly
#
talking about just the diplomatic instrument so now in domestic politics just as it seems
#
that the state often takes credit for something that society has achieved right which is very
#
typical in India and which often society has achieved in spite of the state it strikes
#
me that in foreign policy nations are often negotiating over things which are actually
#
people-to-people things for example a one big political issue often is a trade deficit
#
and people behave as if one country is trading directly with another country but the truth
#
is people from both countries are trading with each other to mutual benefit and you
#
would imagine imagine therefore that the job of the country the job of the state is to
#
enable those transactions so now let's take a scenario where I'm doing this to come to
#
a question about conflicting interests within arms of the state that where for example I
#
am from the foreign office and I feel that it's great if China invests more and if more
#
of their goods come but let's say Manoj is from the home department and he has political
#
pressure because lobbies of local manufacturers are saying no put heavy tariffs because otherwise
#
it is hurting us and of course economically sound thing to do is to not have any tariffs
#
at all but there are these political pressures so are there these kind of internal like from
#
within the government pools and pressures that the foreign office has to deal with definitely
#
that exists and an example of that is the Huawei issue which is currently going on right
#
so should Huawei be involved in India's 5g critical infrastructure now there are various
#
views on it right one clear view is the economic view that India might be losing out on a lot
#
of things because Huawei is clearly the front-runner it overestimates its ability because Samsung
#
and all are also catching up but nevertheless there will be some economic loss to it on
#
the other end there is the security first approach which says that you know you shouldn't
#
involve China because they might snoop into your infrastructure then the third one is
#
a strategic view right that what it does it augur well for India to give away handover
#
its critical infrastructure to an adversarial state which is more powerful than us than
#
currently right so these are all conflicting views so foreign policy always has to grapple
#
with this on this particular issue for example again using the multiple tents and not one
#
camp approach with the way we have articulated it is that for phones etc which give tremendous
#
amount of consumer surplus to an individual Indian we should allow Huawei or any Chinese
#
phone but when it comes to the critical network infrastructure we should avoid Chinese investment
#
there what do you see yeah no that's the argument that we've met and I agree with that argument
#
I think the other sort of example value would sort of framing the question the thought kept
#
into my mind the thought that kept coming to me was you were talking about RCEP and
#
India pulling out of RCEP it was exactly that right it was the fact that you were negotiating
#
for so many years and you were positive despite sort of domestic push and pull from multiple
#
lobbies within India and even sort of this government sort of swadeshi branch which wanted
#
us to pull out of this deal yet we were negotiating the fact that the Prime Minister went there
#
obviously he didn't go there with the idea that I'm going to go there and say thanks
#
but no thanks he went there with the idea of signing up yet there were pressures that
#
forced him to pull out which predominantly were domestic sort of economic pressures which
#
told him that his lobbies would probably not be working in his favor if he ends up signing
#
this deal it'll hurt him politically no it's really ironic and really sad that the one
#
time the Prime Minister listened to pressure from the opposition it was to do the wrong
#
thing I mean our pulling out of RCEP frankly was just so stupid and counterproductive according
#
to me I don't think he listened to the opposition I think they also believe in this no but I
#
think he the swadeshi wing and all of that because otherwise it made no sense to go there
#
the fact that you went there you thought that you had a deal and you would want to actually
#
end up doing a deal but yeah that's exactly an example of how these things play out and
#
one good thing the man was about to do that could have been one of those transformative
#
things in foreign policy yeah actually amid it I don't think foreign policy is any different
#
it's actually just between concentrated interest versus dispersed interest right the benefits
#
are they concentrated or they are dispersed so for example if there is a foreign policy
#
which allows investments from all countries it will benefit a large number of people in
#
a dispersed manner but it will affect a few Indian incumbent players in a concentrated
#
cost and therefore they will lobby in all of that which exists in other areas also so
#
it's quite similar to that and on trade deficit for example we've always argued right it
#
is about trade deficit by itself is not a bad thing exactly I mean I have a trade deficit
#
with my domestic help for example I pay her every month I buy her services she doesn't
#
buy anything from me and it's a positive sum game yeah so and it indicates comparative
#
advantage so if China's investment into India we have manufactured products come from China
#
to India it indicates that they are good at it but we can have some other trade we can
#
use that investment to grow our own companies and then our companies we can again invest
#
back in China right so it is about and a part of me the libertarian part of me is also rebelling
#
to the way you're saying are and we and because these are all dispersed individuals and dispersed
#
companies who are all trading to sort of mutual benefit we've spoken a lot about how sort
#
of India looks at the world let's talk about how the world looks at India for example let's
#
start with the US I mean let's go major power by major part let's start at the US that you
#
know initially through the Cold War we must have been an extremely pesky presence for
#
them though you know they've blown hot and cold I had a fascinating episode with Srinath
#
Raghavan on US foreign policy in South Asia over the decades but how has that changed
#
in recent years and secondly can it change in recent years like can we talk of something
#
called a coherent foreign policy where so much of what they do is to the whims and fancies
#
and Twitter moods of the president at 3 a.m. yeah again so for example we can't look at
#
us as a rational actor only because then there are these big variances which are happening
#
now but if I had to make that simplification I think broadly US as I said earlier the transition
#
has been one they see India at a different level than a regional player and a different
#
from Pakistan and secondly they see India as a potential balancing power against China
#
that's why they are so interested in doing lots of things a quad and others where India
#
becomes an important role so largely the trend has been positive US requires India as well
#
for its own interests so that's where our interests overlap yeah and also possible market
#
for many more things not just goods but also things like education I mean high time when
#
we open up our education sector to foreign institutes and universities and the attraction
#
of Western institutes is obviously going to be primary so there's lots of places where
#
lots of untapped potential that you can sort of nurture and eventually sort of get to hopefully
#
have to me as then the rest of it I agree with Pranay that yeah that's how the US looks
#
at us so you have strength in numbers right anything that comes into India or China you
#
always have a huge market so a lot of countries companies which are in different nation states
#
are looking at it so they are trying to push the foreign policy of their nation state in
#
favor of the other nation states and also there's been a lot happening in recent years
#
so there are all these pulls and pressures in the relationship with the Middle East obviously
#
with the North Korea and the recent sort of tensions with Iran and all of that does India
#
just kind of take a step back and say is none of our business let them play out or are there
#
opportunities for us and other threats for us in all of this potential turmoil that may
#
happen there are definitely opportunities and threats there and we can't afford to have
#
a completely isolationist position because now the global economy is also intertwined
#
just anything which happens on Iran is going to affect and as you pointed out some of them
#
are in our neighborhood depending on how we define exactly so that is an important factor
#
so but what realistically India can do depends on India's own capabilities right and that
#
needs to come from gaining more strength economically and militarily for which we need to grow so
#
we might want to do great things but to achieve them in reality we need to build strength
#
so if we have to look at it from the same sense okay something US does with Iran now
#
we will do a marginal cost marginal benefit approach right should we have a should we
#
intervene in that in some way or not now the marginal benefit of intervening currently
#
for the marginal cost will be high because we US is closely tied with the Indian economy
#
in Iran not so much apart from oil so realistically if we can if you want to change that marginal
#
benefit cost calculation we have to build our own strength yeah that is going to be
#
fundamental to everything like I mean the current foreign ministers uses phrase right
#
that India will be a leading power we will no longer abstain from things and we will
#
actually take decisions that's wonderful but would you have the capacity to sustain the
#
backlash from some of these decisions would you have the capacity to back those decisions
#
up where as needed those are the kind of things I mean so far it's in the region like the
#
Middle East the fact that India has done somewhat similar to what the Chinese have done is we
#
won't have a good relationship with everybody we don't necessarily want to rock the boat
#
with anybody because fundamentally our energy resources come from here and we don't have
#
the capacity like the US to you know twist and turn your arms to get you to agree to
#
our demands so we want to have a good relationship with everybody and while we sort of stick
#
to certain principal positions so while through the time through the 90s we were sort of pro
#
the Palestinian cause we also developed a very deep relationship with Israel and those
#
are the kind of things that have benefited us in the long run pivoting away from some
#
of these things might create new complications at least till you don't have the capacity
#
to pivot away and you know deal with the consequences that will come with it one of the examples
#
in the Middle East if I was to continue that example our greatest dependency is energy
#
variations in prices hit our economy badly what are the sort of alternative methods that
#
we're doing one of the ideas that we've discussed in the office is a strategic reserve and where
#
our strategic reserve have you been studying that and what we realize is based on studying
#
is that actually we've done reasonably well on that so now when you've done that you've
#
created yourself the created for yourself the room to be able to do some of these other
#
things that you might want to shift your positions pivot and deal with the pressure that might
#
come with somebody saying well okay fine these are the prices of oil or artificially if I'm
#
going to reduce output and that's going to affect you so if we do some of these things
#
then yes you can make those decisions which may seem difficult but till you're not doing
#
that you're not going to be making those decisions and that's where the capacity argument comes
#
in let's move now to China on which of course you and I did an episode a few months ago
#
Manoj with China I have a dual question which is one of course how does it look at India
#
and how that has changed but to also China was famously very insular for a long time
#
where they looked within you know they were the Middle Kingdom and they were quite happy
#
to kind of ignore everything outside their peripheries and has that been changing are
#
they more aggressive are they more into projecting power and how has their dynamic with the US
#
changed partly because of situations outside their control of course but how were things
#
evolving and how does all of that affect India which is like 20 questions I'm so sorry.
#
Just a quick sweep the Chinese were insular for a very small period of time which was
#
about 10-12 years when the cultural revolution happened and they had after the internal turmoil
#
till 78 which is when they entered reform in open even historically all those kingdoms
#
so not necessarily I mean there was a point of time where the Ming dynasty was outward
#
looking it was actually venturing into many places I mean if you look at this is a good
#
exercise to do so anybody sitting at home just go and download all the maps of Chinese
#
dynasties and then superimpose them over each other creating a time-lapse and you will actually
#
see that the ancient state has expanded quite significantly with each dynasty I would like
#
to see some listener do this please a great image on Twitter so it'll be this you'll see
#
that the state has expanded quite significantly over a period of time and there have been
#
and if you then look at sort of just beyond what is the current Chinese state state territory
#
you'll see that they also ventured in many places under with Zheng He then there came
#
a point where they looked inward and this looking inward had to do partly with their
#
own sense of we are self-contained but also the sense of you know subsequently as sort
#
of the industrial revolution hits the fact that we are sort of losing out and therefore
#
we are looking inward even more this happened during the Qing dynasty now fast forward to
#
Mao Zedong what Mao Zedong did was initially he was an outward looking fellow he didn't
#
have the capacity just like India didn't have the capacity to actually influence events
#
but he realized that he could do it asymmetrically so while he invested in building the bomb
#
and doing all of those things he also trained revolutionaries from around the world from
#
in India there were revolutionaries that were sort of trained over there in Africa in East
#
Asia in the Middle East there were lots of revolutionaries that were trained and the
#
idea was to export this model so you were outward looking in that sense you might not
#
necessarily be looking at expanding territory of the Chinese state but at least the influence
#
through revolution was a case then came the cultural revolution which became insular it
#
became insular because you were just sowing chaos within for the sake of some churn of
#
revolution that he thought he would achieve and then subsequently in 78 you start seeing
#
this shift of policy where you open up to the broader world attract foreign investment
#
work with work with international organizations work with foreign experts to sort of reform
#
your economy dung shopping travels to the US wears that cowboy hat and everything becomes
#
hunky dory but the objective there was we still don't have the capacity to maybe influence
#
things on a certain scale so we define what are our core interests what we can't necessarily
#
give but within that we have a lot of pragmatism of room to cooperate and that's when the sort
#
of dung shopping camps comes up with these frameworks right oh we can talk about these
#
disputes later let's first get rich you know he tells that to other countries also let's
#
first get rich we can do all the stuff later fast forward to today the Chinese come to
#
a point after 2008 when the financial crisis hits where they feel that we've gotten fairly
#
rich and from 2008 onwards still growth in China is quite significant and by the time
#
sort of Xi Jinping is coming to power they've already sort of remolding their policy to
#
us saying that I think we've gotten to a point where we can actually sort of start pushing
#
forward and we probably also need to push on certain things because internally our economic
#
growth will start to slow down significantly and until we start to push outward so they
#
want to sort of aggressively push investments outside because you've got so much foreign
#
reserve which is not yielding enough return in treasury bonds and so on so forth that
#
you want to sort of create more revenue also so there are multiple factors which lead to
#
this push outside and that's where they are today where they feel that formally the sort
#
of ideology shifts from hiding and biding your time to let's actively change things
#
to be able to get our objectives and that's what they're doing right now it's again in
#
some ways just the fact that I think when I think Pranay will talk about this just the
#
Edward Latwalk in his book had this wonderful analogy of China being this giant elephant
#
in an elevator and just by the fact that it's an elephant in an elevator it's squeezing
#
other people and it's growing larger and the larger it's growing the more it's squeezing
#
people so even if it doesn't have aggressive intent it's creating problems for others and
#
that's what's sort of happening with the Chinese in terms of how they look at India if you
#
read what they say I mean don't go by the great informal symmetry that we're doing and
#
the wonderful pictures just read their classification of powers they have a classification of major
#
powers in which they see the Russia the US and the European Union and then they have
#
a classification of peripheral powers India falls within peripheral power it's a little
#
bit notch above the sort of Vietnam Philippines of course but it's still a peripheral power
#
which it sees within the context of this sort of Indian Ocean South Asian region they don't
#
necessarily see them as a see India as a major power and that's why the sense is that this
#
can be a pesky irritant like you define describe India in the 50s for the US this can be an
#
irritant in sort of our pathway it can also be a trouble maker because it has the capacity
#
to deliver certain kind of pain particularly if you enter into conflict yet by and large
#
status course won't necessarily be looking to move an alter status quo inefficient unable
#
to necessarily deliver large-scale projects projects which creates a credibility crisis
#
in other countries and therefore creates opportunities for us so it is a threat in some ways particularly
#
as it China sort of expands into the Indian Ocean region but largely it's read that they
#
feel they can contain and that's what we've seen them try to do at any point of time with
#
China's relationship with the US tends to become difficult you've seen them reach out
#
to the neighbors and try to sort of smoothen tensions along the periphery and that's what's
#
happened in the last couple of years as you as and when and if although it's highly unlikely
#
they enter into some sort of a modus vivendi with the US with this current tension with
#
the US you'll probably start seeing greater pressure you'll probably start seeing greater
#
pressure on India on Japan and these what kind of pressure so you'll probably start
#
seeing greater pushback on Indian criticism you'd probably start seeing greater money
#
being invested in South Asia you'd probably start seeing greater arguments against this
#
idea that you know we want India to be part of this broader BRI or whatever well if you
#
don't want to be part of it don't be part of it we don't necessarily need to work with
#
you the market will remain in a lot so if you can have in India which is favorable to
#
you great if you can have in India which is non-aligned in this conflict with the US acceptable
#
but if you can actually enter into some sort of an deal with the US of some sort of a g2
#
arrangement then India becomes far less significant in some ways because then you are looking
#
at and then actually for you might become much more significant to India because India
#
might say well okay now we need to work with them more so you will see the Chinese pushing
#
their weight around a little bit more than what they do normally so those are the kind
#
of things that I think we can see going forward yeah again if you see right the because US
#
sees China as the challenger and now China is also aspiring to be the US when you talk
#
about India China relationship again US becomes an important determinant so again if I have
#
to draw really broadly a few schools of thought from China over the last few years they would
#
be one school of thought sees India as doing US is bidding on a lot of things that is one
#
extremist school of thought the other school of thought which was there probably 10 years
#
ago it had some narrative dominance was India as a competitor to some of the things China
#
is doing now not so much but that was one the other the third narrative is India is
#
insignificant right that also was a narrative which is no longer the dominant one at any
#
point of time but it exists and the fourth one is India as a competitor right competition
#
in some areas and probably areas of cooperation in others so I think these are like broad
#
four schools of thought the two that are dominant now I would say is one sometimes they see
#
India is doing US is bidding and the other one is no but there are areas of cooperation
#
that we can explore what do you know I think the primary concern from them for an Indian
#
perspective is that they see India as a potential spoiler in terms of its alignment with the
#
US and therefore I said an India which is aligned to the US which is problematic and
#
India which is favorable to China great and India which is non aligned in this contest
#
with the US is acceptable but in India which sort of tilts towards the US in more ways
#
than one is problematic I mean every time you read the Chinese talking about anything
#
that India does it's through this prism of the US to me that tells you two things one
#
that their competition with the US is what's defining this and the other that this idea
#
of India as a cooperative partner in certain areas is also limited to the prism of not
#
necessarily strategic domains because you'll see the fact that you are worried about certain
#
this party aligning with your primary adversary you know that you're not going to be cooperating
#
with them on strategic domains but what you also know is that this party is not necessarily
#
as significant in the larger scheme of things if I can reach a deal with the Americans then
#
the potential of in India to play a spoiler in my eyes is far smaller because it doesn't
#
necessarily have the kind of backing that it has unless it's obviously growing significantly
#
at those eight nine ten percent over the next ten years while this competition with the
#
US continues to play out and then you're at a point where India is significantly stronger
#
so then even if you've sort of got some sort of a deal with the US this is a significant
#
problem irrespective of that I'm at the moment I don't think that's the case and the final
#
question about China before we move on which is that the long-standing disputes they have
#
with us into including the border disputes are they just strategic levers which you use
#
as and when you want to manipulate your way to some kind of a you know change the equilibrium
#
or can any of them actually escalate and explode into conflict look I think there is a probability
#
is very very low but there is a possibility that you can end up having conflict to me
#
if you look at China's history when it comes to dealing with territorial disputes it had
#
about 14 11 12 11 to 14 ran border disputes and it settled most of them the only ones
#
that are remaining are with Bhutan and India and the one with Bhutan is also remaining
#
because India is a party to all of it I mean given the asymmetry between Bhutan and China
#
the Chinese would have settled it one way or the other I think the border dispute with
#
India persists for a number of reasons it's partly sort of strategically because you wanted
#
to push that aside and say let's work together on certain things which is what Rajiv Gandhi
#
and Tang shopping agreed to and you thought okay let's just go about confidence building
#
and we'll do this from a Chinese point of view there was there any value in settling
#
this dispute and giving away what became important territory particularly Tawang in Arunachal
#
Pradesh which was sort of became in some way linked to identity of their control over Tibet
#
and those sorts of things the other bit was the fact that till the Dalai Lama till they
#
saw that as a problem that Dalai Lama's influence in Tibet as a problem you could not necessarily
#
resolve it because you saw that as a persistent problem I think today it's an opportunity
#
for them to use it strategically so there is no incentive for the Chinese to resolve
#
this dispute India is not necessarily going to be like I said they don't necessarily
#
see India as a power which is going to necessarily move to alter the status quo they see India
#
as a status quo power so they want to come to a point where the Indians would either
#
agree to what your formulation is if not and if you even want to say current status quo
#
becomes international boundary for that you need to be feeling comfortable enough in your
#
in the political position of the leader which I guess they're right now but also the fact
#
that you need to feel comfortable about your control over Tibet and the idea that you control
#
Tibet increasingly that's become the bigger issue is how do you see how do you see Arunachal
#
Pradesh the fact that Chinese in the last couple of years have internally reissued revised
#
maps demarcating places in Arunachal Pradesh with Chinese names and drawing them in Chinese
#
territory tells you that they're not serious about settling this with India at status quo
#
levels and this and they want to sort of pressurize India if India agrees to give on some of those
#
things in some sort of a package deal saying okay you can take this and we'll take that
#
very difficult for an Indian government to give up Arunachal Pradesh but if India was
#
to agree to something like that the Chinese would be game for it I don't think that they'll
#
see no value in settling this but at the moment the fact that they want to keep it alive and
#
they don't want to necessarily even share their formal claims with you tells you that they
#
want to use it as a strategic they want to use it as a lever anytime you need it you
#
can use it and I would also say China has settled its territorial disputes with many
#
countries but created new territorial disputes as well oh on the maritime domain so yeah
#
I mean so the interesting thing about the South China Sea is that it's about so one
#
of the reasons of how these disputes have come about right so in the in 49 once the
#
PRC is formed the communist party does not necessarily have a sense of bureaucracy and
#
state apparatus I mean it's not like when India got independence there was a trained
#
bureaucracy these were rag tag fighters who were running around the country you know predominantly
#
propelled by villagers and farmers peasants and workers for them to suddenly figure out
#
the idea that you imagine where your boundaries lie and this is where my territory ends and
#
this is sovereignty therefore is a difficult concept to grasp so what you take is what
#
you get from the past and the idea of South China Sea this is an interesting argument
#
of how your claims how the claims developed how this nine-dash line developed in 1911-12
#
there was a line drawn by some researcher in the 30s another researcher had taken it
#
up and two of his students took up from their teachers course material that got translated
#
to a forum in Beijing in the 40s that when the communist party came to power they saw
#
this is oh okay this makes sense this is probably our boundaries and that becomes part of your
#
sort of imagination going forward that this is this dashed line is part of Chinese territory
#
now if you go back further further further you'll find many more examples of when it
#
was and when it wasn't and the Chinese have subsequently done that when the communist
#
party came to power they didn't have a sense of this you got this piece of paper and you
#
thought this makes sense but the origins of that line the significance of it to your national
#
identity and your territorial integrity and your sovereignty is manufactured over a number
#
of years and it's manufactured because in part that's how you start imagining what you
#
were so a part of that is this creation of new ideas but part of that is also just you
#
get this institutional memory from somewhere and you start to incorporate it because that's
#
how you want to imagine your greatness going forward and that's what happens in most of
#
these disputes I would like to say that China doing border incidents like the case of Doklam
#
is actually a strategic mistake on their part because that is going to develop this whole
#
narrative in India see nationalism will always come up on these issues right and then it
#
will develop a narrative in India that you know China is only an adversary and nothing
#
else so that from if you take a longer arc for China it is not good that you are going
#
to just antagonize a whole set of Indians for some small border disputed it's not as
#
if India they can run over India is not possible we are nuclear powers it's not as if they
#
are going to take over Arunachal Pradesh and India is not going to do anything so the gains
#
for them from any of these border disputes are very little but they have a lot more to
#
lose let's move on now to how Pakistan looks at India and I know you're looking at me with
#
this approval because I've moved closer geographically from the US to China to Pakistan so this happens
#
to be the default neighborhood that I have chosen so how does Pakistan look at India
#
and does Pakistan have a foreign policy towards India or a military jihadi policy both because
#
both entities exist but it is predominantly see in Pakistan it is very clear that defense
#
anything related to India is the domain of the military jihadi complex so the putative
#
state does not have that much to say it's so they do have a policy and their policy
#
is to ensure that you know India doesn't it's just like how in India now you see everything
#
being talked about with the reference to Pakistan in Pakistan it's been there for many many
#
years right like everything you see it see it from an Indian lens so that sort of continues
#
what has hurt them is that their economy has also faltered because of this because of the
#
terrorist terrorism as an instrument of their foreign policy it has bitten them back and
#
because of that their own strength in to hurt India has reduced and that's why there is
#
a bit of rethinking in certain quarters there as well a lot of military jihadi rethink is
#
happening now just think of it right they were get on the gravy train from the US they
#
wish to get this coalition support funds and all that now US policy changed because this
#
terrorism had an impact on US as well and narrative in the US change that you know Pakistan
#
is not a good partner and is that a narrative changing got something to do with India's
#
foreign policy is that a foreign policy success for us did we manipulate that in some way
#
or did it change on its own it is I think Pakistan's own doing did have a rule India's
#
I think the just the fact that India was growing from 2004 to 2009 that itself was India's
#
biggest contribution to change this narrative but apart from that Pakistan did many things
#
on its own and it helped in developing a narrative in the US that you know Pakistan is not a
#
partner which is has the same interest as that of the US so now that has happened they
#
are also feeling the pinch right no investments coming in everyone in the world thinking of
#
Pakistan as the state which has sponsored terrorism so because of that there is and
#
lot of terrorism incidents happening within Pakistan itself right so that's why there
#
is on the military jihadi complex also there is a lot of churn happening internally you
#
know and that is what is going on currently and has that relationship with China changed
#
the incentives for them because with China investing so much in Pakistan they would obviously
#
want Pakistan to be stable and not muck around and especially not get into a war with India
#
does that then affect us positively because it changes Pakistan's behavior towards us
#
so my sense is that the jury is out on that in theory yes in theory yes the fact that
#
the Chinese are engaged in the region much more and they are Pakistan's primary benefactor
#
they would you would assume that they would want greater stability but I am not necessarily
#
sure that that's actually played out because they might not be rational actors as a model
#
you might not be rational actors and also the sense that you know you until instability
#
in India caused by Pakistan based actors also helps China it keeps India sort of you know
#
Lev lost out a little bit and I think that is one of the things that actually plays out
#
the other thing is that you want to necessarily have instability at till a certain threshold
#
you don't want it to cross a certain threshold and I think that's where what we are seeing
#
is being played out so when you see that things can escalate which is what happened in February
#
last year you will see the Chinese also actively getting involved saying guys calm down calm
#
down and all right you know the Indian foreign ministers in Beijing and we're talking about
#
these things and we're going to say yes yes we are statement is going to say let's eradicate
#
the root causes of terrorism and then two weeks later once the Pakistani foreign minister
#
comes in you says yes yes what we mean by root causes of terrorism is development so
#
you might end up doing some of those things because and that tells you that the sense
#
is that let's keep certain threshold of instability is fine the challenge for the Chinese going
#
forward and that would be well how do you stop to breed that instability you need actors
#
which are funded supported by state instruments the military jihadi complex and you need the
#
jihadis also which are non-state actors effectively or it definitionally wise they are non-state
#
actors how are you going to contain them from then turning on to the Chinese who are working
#
in Pakistan I mean let's remember those many years ago when that Lal Masjid siege happened
#
in Lahore it was the Chinese who were taken hostages and the frustration of those people
#
who took the Chinese hostages was essentially that the justification was that they are perverting
#
our culture by their massage parlors so as you have more Chinese engaged in Pakistan
#
how do you then keep this sort of thing separated that there won't be a backlash against you
#
and there are already certain cases where there is a backlash against them Pakistan
#
is a conservative society and also the more and Nitin says this always you know the closer
#
their embrace the tighter their embrace the you know greater the tensions that they'll
#
end up feeling so it's gonna be difficult balancing act for the Chinese to do this but
#
at the moment I'm not necessarily sure that the fact that the Chinese are engaged means
#
greater stability in theoretically yes but I don't think that's how it's playing and
#
even theoretically like you said it's probably in their interest to keep a certain threshold
#
of conflict going because that prevents the Indian army from changing focus to China completely
#
yeah you know as you guys were mentioning yeah and let's look at what kind of a benefactor
#
China is towards military jihadi complex because that is what determines their relationship
#
with India to us unlike the US US was all giving them just cash to run Afghanistan policy
#
in fact a friend of mine when I was in Pakistan in 2006 had said that in Pakistan they call
#
Al-Qaeda Al-Faida because the USA just floated yeah but China is not a similar actor for
#
example a lot of money that they are putting in is also conditional it is loans not grants
#
so there they are more involved and they are in the neighborhood remember they are not
#
far away like the USS you are talking of geographical neighborhoods yeah I hope China sees it so
#
given that they are in the neighborhood their interests are slightly different from that
#
of the US and remember still US GDP per capita is sixty thousand dollars China is ten thousand
#
dollars so it's not as if they can give the same amount of money to Pakistan so military
#
jihadi complex is going to feel the pinch of money one because they don't have the same
#
guy as the US on their side and second the China is also going to give loans and not
#
grants so that is going to hurt them in the short term and I mean apart from so traditionally
#
where the Chinese and the Pakistanis are working so they work together so the military aspect
#
of the relationship dominated the relationship until very recently at the moment what's happened
#
is that while there is CPEC and all of the conversation is about CPEC that military to
#
military engagement has expanded significantly in the past there was support in Pakistan's
#
nuclear program but today you're you know jointly developing jets you're doing submarine
#
drills you're expanding your theater of cooperation now militarily which doesn't necessarily bode
#
well for India when India which is anyway concerned about this idea of the so-called
#
string of pearls of Chinese ports all around us and Chinese potential bases all around
#
us in Pakistan you asserted that it's not just whether you get a formal base or not
#
in Guadarra you are sufficiently synthesizing the Pakistani army in terms of its equipment
#
which will mean that even in case of conflict and they may not be a permanent base over
#
there the possibilities for the Chinese to do soft basing very easily repair maintenance
#
whatever they need in the Indian Ocean if there's a conflict they can easily do it through
#
Pakistan even if Pakistan is not directly involved in the conflict so that embrace is
#
getting closer and that embrace is probably far more dangerous for us going forward and
#
there's very little that we can do to contain that so sort of you know I mean obviously
#
in the last 10 years or so our economy has grown significantly weaker since 2011 you
#
know starting with the disastrous economic policies of Pranab Mukherjee and then following
#
on the Modi administration all through all of which I've discussed in various episodes
#
including Pooja Mehra which are linked from the show notes because of all of that our
#
general prosperity and all of that has gone down and that is of course part of our foreign
#
policy standing and the power that we can wield in the world so taking all this into
#
account and also taking into account the changing currents and conflicts which have been happening
#
in the globe over the last 10 years what are the sort of increased threats and opportunities
#
that we have to consider from a foreign policy perspective the increased threats are again
#
I would say that if we are thinking of India as a swing power the ability for us to hurt
#
our adversaries is decreasing our instruments that we have available will decrease so that
#
is what is happening over the last few years because of the economic slowdown that means
#
that we can cannot take very strong actions against China even if they are not doing a
#
reciprocal action right and they are antagonistic towards us there's little that we can do if
#
we don't have the economic wherewithal that those are the threats I don't think there
#
are any opportunities of slowing economy at all I think so I agree with Pranay that our
#
ability to use those instruments will diminish or does the capacity of those instruments
#
will diminish my sense is that and my fear is this that fact might be obscured by the
#
greater willingness of this administration to exercise what we already command as power
#
and that's evident in what we've done with Malaysia right now where we decided to ban
#
palm oil imports because of statements made by the Malaysian Prime Minister the exercise
#
of some of these things will because of course you do command certain power will obscure
#
the fact that your power is diminishing relatively and because it pleases the domestic constituency
#
and I think that is a bigger fear that I have because that will sort of deviate away from
#
the fact that we are actually losing out from the fact that okay no we've done this one
#
good thing and I don't think there's necessarily even lessons being learnt of how we are doing
#
these things effectively because when we did this against Nepal a couple of years ago within
#
by the Modi government itself it didn't necessarily lead to the gains that we wanted to we created
#
a blockade it actually ended up it actually ended up with us losing out in terms of our
#
influence in Nepal and opening the door for greater Chinese presence in the country so
#
I think but the fact that we exercised power was seen as something positive which I think
#
is problematic because I don't think that in itself would be seen as something positive
#
but it was sold as something positive right decisive government yeah but the hope is you
#
will see the consequences of that will be felt by the dispersed costs of that will eventually
#
add up right and that's what will change things so right so you know so I've taken more than
#
two hours of your time so to kind of end the episode and move away from foreign policy
#
towards the foreign policy ecosystem and my question here is at a general level public
#
intellectuals matter because they shape the discourse they seed ideas into the culture
#
and obviously politics is a game of supply and demand in the political marketplace the
#
parties will respond to what the people want and so on and so forth also public intellectuals
#
matter because they can shape the elites who actually hold some of the levers of government
#
what is it for public intellectuals like you guys working in foreign policy do you actually
#
have any sort of influence what is like the ecosystem for people like you do foreign policy
#
professionals from across the world get together once in a while and form a community and cry
#
on each other's shoulders give me a sense of that yeah I think that happens a lot in
#
foreign policy so for example we are in India's most globalized city in Bangalore and we are
#
connected to so many outside the government also there's a lot of people to people connection
#
so you end up exchanging a lot of notes so you will have visitors from Australia US China
#
even so those kind of exchanges do happen and you talk about all these aspects so that
#
is one influence where you influence the other nation state within the country itself now
#
any for any think tank in India for example will generally have a foreign policy wing
#
as well I guess because again domestic things are too complicated so people generally try
#
to have foreign policy but is that a box to take or is there like you know a rich body
#
of work also developing it is developing now and there are a lot of good original studies
#
coming up from Indian think tanks as well so that is another ecosystem that you are
#
tapped into then with the government itself MEA has been compared to other ministries
#
it has been over the years not just with this government it is a ministry which does exchange
#
a lot of ideas from outside the government so there has been a lot of to and fro of ideas
#
with them as well yeah I mean if you just go back a couple of weeks ago you had rice
#
and dialogues in Delhi massive event mega event a lot of the focus of strategic affairs
#
foreign affairs so it's a growing ecosystem in India according to me it's a growing ecosystem
#
this interesting work also coming out and it can be an influential ecosystem an actual
#
policy yeah potentially it can be an influential ecosystem in fact like when I mentioned the
#
MEA in the last couple of months actually in the last couple of years they appointed
#
Ashok Malik as an external consultant they've also put out requirements for an external
#
consultant specifically on China so they have looked at expertise beyond government which
#
is a good thing in our engagement what we've realized is that if you reach out you tend
#
to at least get hurt and increasingly we felt that we're getting heard whether those things
#
are being taken up is another matter altogether and there are multiple interests that one
#
needs to consider when before you take up a policy recommendation but at least the fact
#
that somebody sitting across the table from you and engaging with the ideas that you have
#
which might be very contrary to their institutional sort of you know path dependence in their
#
sense of you know where their government's interest lies is a positive so the first thing
#
is that you start getting hurt and I think that's happening so I'm a little bit more
#
optimistic on that and I'm hopeful that as the ecosystem grows bigger and potentially
#
even grows a little bit louder the fact that there will be diversity of voices will encourage
#
a better debate and will make sure that government actually listens to outside voices yeah I
#
think the most important role of the public intellectual is the public part of it so how
#
much are we the role in foreign policy is also similar to be able to convey to a larger
#
body of people why foreign relations are important how does economic growth have an impact on
#
that those are important so for example I tried to write a column in Hindi on a lot
#
of foreign policy matters because I think we need to convey those ideas in as many languages
#
otherwise it will be just seen as these a bunch of people doing and for some again there
#
is that insular tendency in India as well like in China that why bother about those
#
things we have enough problems of our own we are such a big continent sized country
#
let's only do things here but we need to realize that foreign policy is also an instrument
#
for us to grow for us to do well for us to bring yoga kshema and that's why the public
#
intellectual needs to be able to convey those ideas to a larger body of people and on that
#
hopeful note of yoga kshema which I know we all aspire to and I hope we all succeed in
#
achieving thank you so much guys for coming on the show thank you and now let's get a
#
quick update on what is happening with kovat 19 this update is being recorded on April
#
23rd Pranay and Manoj welcome back thanks Amit good to be here in a new world yeah thanks
#
Amit good to be here in searing heat in my house yeah we are all in searing heat because
#
we have turned off the fan and sort of kindly bear with us if some outside noises do creep
#
in Pranay I want to turn to you next my assumption is that you know there is that old saying
#
about there are years when nothing happens and then there is a week when years happen
#
and clearly I think the last few weeks have just changed the world entirely is that also
#
true for foreign policy yeah thanks Amit I think first of all whatever sort of prognosis
#
that we have now is very tentative right because the world is still evolving and we don't know
#
what's going to happen in next but I was trying to look at are there any frameworks through
#
which we can understand what might happen next so from that perspective yes it looks
#
like there will be fundamental change in how geopolitics operates and also fundamental
#
change in how the geo economics of the world is operating so in a sense yes I do see a
#
significant change coming to the world and Manoj at the heart of this has been a country
#
that you know very deeply and have studied very carefully which is China you know give
#
me a little bit of that not just from a foreign policy sense but you know China is so opaque
#
and so mysterious to outsiders give me a sense of what's been happening there internally
#
how has it been you know affected internally as far as the politics and the society is
#
concerned and how that will then go on to impact the way they look at the world and
#
the way the world looks at them yeah I think I think there's been a sort of strange three
#
four months from their perspective also I mean if you go back to January one would have
#
you know the way things were happening in China all the reportage was like okay this
#
is a black swan event and you know Chinese politics have changed this fundamental insecurity
#
in the country potentially the party would collapse and this is the biggest test ever
#
and so on and so forth and three months down the road lo and behold there's all this stuff
#
about I mean the economist had a cover recently which was about has China already won so it's
#
quite a strange turn around in three three and a half months of how this is played out
#
domestically I think there's lots that I mean there's lots that's happening which is uncovered
#
so there's lots of public anger there's lots of elite anger in China we've seen that with
#
social media posts by say people like Ranzar Jiang or people like Xu Zhangrong these are
#
people who sort of very publicly criticized Xi Jinping and Xu Zhangrong is a professor
#
who's been a critic of Xi Jinping Ranzar Jiang is among the elite he's sort of a party tycoon
#
and he's sort of very publicly criticized Xi Jinping in a social media post calling
#
him saying that the emperor clearly has no clothes and all these guys are now under so
#
called investigation but it tells you that there is a pushback that's happening even
#
among the elite circles that doesn't tell you that Xi Jinping is going to lose control
#
of the party or that the party is going to collapse but it just tells you that there
#
is a lot of churning that's taking place within the party in terms of the people of Wuhan
#
I mean today in India we've been in lockdown for just about a month and there has been
#
there's been too much there's been frustration there's been anger there's been mishandling
#
of certain things imagined in a place like Wuhan where the lockdown lasted for 76 days
#
plus you know the fact that the government initially failed to deal with the crisis and
#
that sense of anger of the number of deaths that have taken place in that city in Hubei
#
province so there is a lot of anger in terms of what happened initially subsequently what's
#
going to happen with the economy because clearly unemployment and all that is going to rise
#
and also how the party sort of narrative has worked I mean I'll give you one example of
#
the sense of frustration when the lockdown was about to be lifted in Wuhan which is in
#
early April you had an attempt by the local party leadership to run something called a
#
gratitude campaign basically asking people to be thankful to the party for saving them
#
from this virus we clearly did go down well with the people of Wuhan so just tells you
#
that there's a lot of churn so some of the stuff about China winning is premature but
#
it's also remarkable how from a point in sort of mid-January when we thought that okay this
#
might be the unraveling in some ways and that was one of the perceptions to today the sense
#
that okay China has recovered its reopening and anger in the world outside saying things
#
like how is the they've managed to control it while we are still struggling and that
#
sort of playing out so it's been an interesting couple of months for them and I think there's
#
going to be lots of difficult times going ahead even for them just to recover from all
#
of this I'm a bit confused about you know the narrative shift to China having won because
#
it would seem to me that there is across the world a lot of anger at China both in sort
#
of at the level of the heads of government with the things that Trump says etc but also
#
there is a lot of native anti-Chinese sentiment coming out in various places such as quite
#
disturbingly in even India and so what is the argument behind saying that this is a
#
victory of some sort for China or enhances their stature in the world yeah I think the
#
argument is essentially that the Chinese economy if you look at even IMF projections China
#
takes an economic hit but the Chinese economy still continues to grow at about 1.2 percent
#
this year whereas others take a deeper hit and the recovery next year at least based
#
on IMF projections is to next year's growth target growth expectation is 9.2 percent now
#
this is all obviously projections with lots of ifs and buts but the assumption is that
#
the Chinese have started getting back to work which people didn't think could have happened
#
so soon and the challenges that the rest of the world is right now facing so that's one
#
thing is the economic challenge so say from an Indian perspective how we mitigate the
#
challenge of the economic slowdown that's going to come down the road would be determining
#
where we eventually stand globally from the anger perspective those things have to still
#
play out despite the anger in the US and despite terms use of terms like Chinese virus and
#
all of that and even cases being filed in the US against the Chinese government China
#
is still central to provision of medical supplies ventilators mass PPE even in the West US governors
#
have been signing deals with Chinese entities and buying all of this in Europe they've been
#
buying all of this there's been criticism of the poor quality of all of this but the
#
fact that China has been has emerged as the center in terms of the heart of the manufacturing
#
of all of this and Xi Jinping sort of captures this when he says that we need to build a
#
health Silk Road as if we didn't have enough Silk Roads but it just tells you that they've
#
tried to move in the center of the world sort of in terms of manufacturing of some what's
#
what's an essential supply but there are challenges to that so I don't sort of agree with the
#
narrative that the Chinese have won in any which way I think the narrative is not useful
#
but that's what's catching hold from that point of view that you know and it's largely
#
because the fact that you've seen a recovery from what one had anticipated in January to
#
what one is seeing today and comparison what one had anticipated in the world nobody anticipated
#
that this would be the state of the world but where the world is hitting and particularly
#
how the developed world the Western world has handled this pandemic how the US has handled
#
it how your parts of Europe have handled it that's what's giving you the sense that the
#
Chinese have managed to control this and again if you just look at death tolls now nobody
#
takes Chinese numbers on face value but you know the death toll if you compare to what's
#
happened in the US and what's happening in China that those sort of things make a difference
#
in terms of how the public perception of all of this is playing out so I don't think the
#
narrative is true or is borne out by deeper consideration and there's lots of ifs and
#
buts going down the road what happens to supply chains in the future do companies stay in
#
China what sort of restrictions come about in terms of global trade all of that is sort
#
of play a role but at the moment just the fact that the Chinese have recovered or seemingly
#
recovered with about 80 to 85 percent of you know factory activity business activity back
#
to somewhat normalcy that's the kind of thing that's fueling this narrative.
#
Rane earlier when we were chatting before the show you mentioned how you know there
#
are implications of COVID-19 across sort of two margins and one is geopolitical and one
#
is geoeconomic can you shed some light on what you mean by these two terms and you know
#
what kind of impacts you're looking at right so when I'm talking about geopolitics it's
#
basically the distribution of power across the world right because we discussed earlier
#
how power is the most important determinant in this immoral world of international relations
#
so the geopolitical axis looks at how has the distribution of power changed because
#
of what happened over the last two months right so if you look at that the overall understanding
#
that we have currently is that sort of COVID-19 accelerates the competition and confrontation
#
between US and China while simultaneously it reduces the absolute power of both of them
#
right so what it means is that US and China will remain the two major poles even after
#
what has happened but their combined leverage has sort of decreased because of what has
#
happened right both US has been hit adversely and even China has been hit adversely and
#
even in the future it's going to be difficult for the economy to be up on its feet like
#
the previous times so it's going to hit both of them okay so what it means is essentially
#
there is also an opportunity for other powers now so reduction in the power of US and China
#
means that some other middle powers will be able to extract some more concessions from
#
either of them right so that is one more thing it of course depends on what those middle
#
powers do internally and domestically but there is an opportunity here second between
#
US and China itself there is this confrontation which was going on is likely to continue right
#
we don't see the fact that US and China will suddenly bury the hatchet and then go on with
#
this so it might not lead to a direct war so it is more like the last cold war which
#
we had where there was confrontation competition but there wasn't any exchange of arms directly
#
for extended periods of time right so that is more likely the difference between that
#
cold war and this one is that in during that cold war time both the major powers US and
#
USSR were ascendant at that point particular point of time when it started but in this
#
case what you see is both of the countries which are involved have been hit adversely
#
so they are sort of on their absolute power has declined because of COVID-19 and that's
#
where we are calling this the new cold war yeah so just to sort of I want to like unpack
#
one part of that a little bit when you talk about the combined leverage of the USA and
#
China decreasing because of COVID-19 one is it then the case that somebody else's leverage
#
increases and two if not is it because that the world overall becomes a little more insular
#
and a little less globalized because of this yeah so what if you look at this from a power
#
angle it's the fact that because the absolute powers of both US and China decreases it's
#
not as if they can force a lot of other countries to do whatever US and China want right so
#
in that sense there might be some more bargaining power which the other countries have specifically
#
look at China as well right so we were talking about the one big project that China has for
#
the world is about the Belt and Road Initiative and it depends significantly on making investing
#
excess capacity abroad now if it wants with this COVID-19 it would want to do that even
#
more given the situation that China is in but those powers that where it can invest
#
now in these new circumstances has decreased even further right because the entire world
#
is going through this which means countries like India countries which are significantly
#
big economic zones become even more important to China so from that angle it's sort of bargaining
#
power of some other middle powers who get things back up domestically correct it's improves
#
a bit right and and Manoj coming back to China I mean one sort of throwaway question I have
#
here is that how do they look at for how do they look at the the pronouncements that come
#
out of Trump's Twitter feed I mean do they just look at him as a loose cannon who they
#
have to ignore and indulge while you know geopolitics proceeds along other lines back
#
channels or do Trump's rants actually have a chance of making the relationship much worse
#
how does one handle something like that yeah no I think I think Trump has an impact and
#
I think the Chinese it's been four years and I think they're still sort of trying to figure
#
out where this man comes from and what he does I think the Twitter sort of so for example
#
his use of the term Chinese virus it clearly hit a run of I don't think that there is any
#
sort of two ways about it I think the sort of unpredictability I think they're somewhere
#
sort of gotten used to the unpredictability of Trump but I think they this is going to
#
be a difficult period to predict anything even more so than the last three years and
#
that's because the US is heading into an election season so Trump is likely to be far more unhinged
#
and the Chinese are likely to be very sensitive to this and they're not likely to be sensitive
#
in the context of just from the point of view that you know diplomacy will continue things
#
will continue but what sort of impact this has on their domestic narrative to me I don't
#
think that there is as much concern because the US-China relationship although right now
#
as bad as it has ever been in the last 40 years there's still a baseline understanding
#
that exists that you know yes we can compete but conflict is not in anybody's interest
#
so at least they can take that as one thing away so there's Trump's pronouncements Trump's
#
unpredictability creates some tensions specific tensions but that's one part of it the broader
#
tension would be what's happening at a bipartisan level in US the fact that Congress is getting
#
even more aggressive senators are getting even more aggressive there are many more legislations
#
with regard to blocking Chinese companies to me that would be a greater concern for
#
them in the long term in the short term I think diplomacy will continue they will continue
#
to work together in whatever limited capacity that they are right now with regard to dealing
#
with this pandemic there's so much more that the US and China can do and they're not doing
#
because there is deep friction there is a positive side to all of this animosity with
#
the US from a Chinese perspective to me and that's how this plays out domestically so
#
every time sort of Trump does something or the US pushes back on something where it need
#
not so for example when China was caught in this racism scandal with Africa over the last
#
couple of weeks they were digging themselves deeper and it's the moment the Americans got
#
involved in the State Department issued a statement saying unfortunately the xenophobia
#
is coming from China and so on and so forth you saw the Chinese pivot on the narrative
#
and saying well look this is these Americans are trying to sort of drive a wedge between
#
us and the Africans and that's the narrative that they sold in Africa now it's not like
#
the African states that were concerned about racism by that narrative but it has an impact
#
on public perception also given you know the Trump's record in Africa is not great he's
#
famous for calling him calling the African countries along with others shithole countries
#
so I don't think it necessarily you know it helps the Chinese from a propaganda purposes
#
in some of these cases and also domestically because then you can ask people to rally around
#
the power party in a sort of nationalistic power given that the US is acting this way
#
against you but at an international level it causes disruptions it causes disruptions
#
in terms of what more can be done to you know deal with the pandemic so it limits cooperation
#
that's to me that's the sort of Trump effect but the deeper concern is with regard to what's
#
happening in US polity with regard to China the fact that different states are filing
#
cases against the Chinese government the fact that at a bipartisan level Congress is pushing
#
through new legislation to restrict business and trade with China those are the kind of
#
things that will outlast Trump and I think that would be their bigger concern that's
#
how sort of I would look at what's happening in that relationship and Manoj there is China's
#
own version of aggressive Twitter diplomacy or as well right we just taken sort of bigger
#
shape during these times yeah I mean yeah I mean the term for all of that is wolf warrior
#
diplomacy right coming from the movie wolf warrior which is a terrible movie yeah and
#
I suffer through it but but if you sort of the idea that you know Chinese diplomats and
#
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson are going to be far more aggressive on social
#
media they're going to peddle conspiracy theories and do much more of that and be far more combative
#
some of that really actually falls flat and they sort of land themselves in far greater
#
problems but the fact that the US response often with even more provocative unpredictable
#
nonsense where it can actually let the Chinese sort of tie themselves up in knots that's
#
where I think the problem sort of is in the way that's playing out either neither side
#
is doing each other a favor by doing that you know that they're doing themselves a favor
#
writing that they're actually helping domestic nationalists forward in each side which is
#
you know probably helps at domestic politics level but actually constrains any sort of cooperative
#
you know constructive movement forward and I think that's the bigger threat to me at
#
the moment than conflict because I think both sides understand that conflict would be deeply
#
damaging and you know speaking of domestic politics one trend that's of course been happening
#
over the last few years and will probably be exacerbated by this is the rise of economic
#
nationalism and Praneer you were mentioning earlier about how you know this is something
#
that has an impact on the liberal economic order can you expand on that a little bit?
#
Yeah so the second axis of the new world order which we were talking about one was geopolitics
#
the second one is geoeconomics right that talks about what will be the general trends
#
in geoeconomic relationships between countries right and on that I think COVID-19 will have
#
a much more significant impact and let's see what's happening in that world right first
#
we are already sort of entering into a global recession phase in the short run and a lot
#
of people believe that a v-shaped recovery which macroeconomists keep talking about is
#
quite unlikely right so you will still have over the next few couple of years at least
#
even if we don't have a recession we'll have a secular stagnation of sorts and we are going
#
to be it's going to be quite some time before we go back to consumption and production levels
#
like we had before COVID so that is one sort of a big trend the second one is just the
#
fact that international labor mobility will drop significantly right already all travel
#
is stopped so and US stopped immigration right a couple of days back so we might say that
#
it's happening only for the time being but this will have some impact for the long term
#
foreign policies of these countries as well so there will be some inertia for these countries
#
to get back to the old days right so international labor mobility has decreased large capital
#
flows now will be restricted to only relatively high performing and high return yielding countries
#
right because now no one has excess capital they would want to be very judicious with
#
what the capital they have right so that is one thing and then goods and services trade
#
between the countries in the with the US and the countries with aligned with China that
#
might decrease somewhat if this sort of confrontation increases so that is why I was saying that
#
the liberal economic order which was underpinned by these three things right the free movement
#
of labor capital goods services that is sort of going to take a setback the third angle
#
that I see coming from all this is just this whole idea of economic nationalism and already
#
people are using scarily using these terms like deglobalization etc right so what we
#
might see is that until now there was this consensus that corporates and global manufacturing
#
can happen anywhere in the world it's fine because the supply chains will sort out things
#
for themselves we will produce according to our comparative advantage and we will be alright
#
but now look at this after covid 19 many nation states might do a hard rethink on this so
#
they might think that you know global manufacturing should move away from this just-in-time kind
#
of thinking to just in case type of thinking right which means they are going to plan for
#
contingencies they are going to plan for a repeat of what has happened now so they are
#
going to try and build some redundancy in these supply chains right which means they
#
are going to instruct some companies to do local sourcing they are going to have more
#
industrial policy regimes tougher tariff regimes we might even see more restricted trade agreements
#
so this is what is a sorry picture actually but we are sort of heading towards that trend
#
in the economic space yeah it's a very scary picture and it totally you know goes against
#
the concept of yoga kshema which you guys expounded upon so well in the part that we
#
recorded in january which brings me to my next question which is about india like where
#
is india in all of this how has our outlook changed like one we've had a completely random
#
and unrelated to covid sort of pushback from you know the arab states about the some of
#
the anti-muslim sentiments expressed by some of our leaders here which is very interesting
#
to me and i'll ask you about what you guys feel about that but also in a larger sense
#
how is india's foreign policy impacted does the diminish leverage of the usa and china
#
mean that india can play a greater part or has the incident like you know trump's threat
#
to india about the supply of hydroxychloroquine which of course it seems from recent tests
#
doesn't even work on this particular disease has that sort of diminished india standing
#
in the world because modi had to cave in so easily so what what do you guys feel yeah
#
on that hydroxychloroquine thing i i don't think that is any indication of the larger
#
foreign policy interest or the direction of india's foreign policy right i mean in fact
#
it is in our national interest to be able to help the u.s. on this counter now we know
#
that maybe that product even doesn't help but anyways if the u.s. was requiring this
#
and if india is providing it it is in our uh interest so i don't think that has sort
#
of it gets played up a lot because of modi caved into donald trump but we are looking
#
at u.s. and india's national interest and there i don't think these the the small thing
#
has a really big implication now coming to the larger picture yeah as a middle power
#
which will still be probably one of the few countries which will still have a positive
#
growth rate might okay we don't know about that uh but uh that that is why many countries
#
will still want to look at india will turn to india even uh the big thing that opportunity
#
lies is for example i talked about how global manufacturing might want to move away from
#
china build some redundancies so that is one opportunity for india you know to focus on
#
attracting companies which are currently manufacturing in china and to sort a lot of that we need
#
to actually get uh things all done well back home right so for example we need to get logistics
#
right we need to actually transition to a low import duty regime now because global
#
firms if they said shop here they would still want to source things from various other parts
#
so we want to help them in that uh process right so uh there are a lot of these opportunities
#
if you want we can discuss more about them but uh it all depends on the things that india
#
does domestically uh to be able to take opportunity of the fact that u.s and china will both be
#
uh declined somewhat because of covid 19 yeah if i can add to that i mean uh yeah a lot
#
of what india's foreign policy and how india's stature sort of globally in how we emerge out
#
of all of this depends on how we manage uh the economic fallout and how quickly we recover
#
and how well we recover but from a from the point of view of you know what happens to
#
the relationship with china i mean our view is that uh look um there's going to be more
#
of the same more of the same dynamic that's going to play out uh that's existed so there's
#
no fundamental shifting of the dynamic that existed um the fact that china and the u.s
#
are going to be at each other's throats uh without entering conflict is creates opportunities
#
for us right because uh as a middle power you can sort of bargain with both of them
#
because you know both of them want you uh to put it very crudely in their camp um i
#
mean india is never going to be in china's camp but at least the best that beijing can
#
hope for is that you know you're non-aligned in a more true sense of the phrase uh than
#
say in the past and that is what they would at least look for and beijing would also want
#
stability you don't necessarily want a conflict because there's lots of churn happening so
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in that sense there is an opportunity for india but the flip side is that because the
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sino u.s competition becomes far stronger and far deeper there's a risk and the risk
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is that china already is quite sensitive to sort of india's relationship with the u.s
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so anytime sort of india even talks about the indo-pacific or freedom of navigation
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or anything like that you see sort of a reaction from beijing anytime you see something you
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know this talk of you know the quad having a meeting or a particular joint maritime drill
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between india the u.s japan and australia which has so far not happened but anytime
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you have that sort of a conversation you'll see a reaction from beijing and anytime you
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see india sort of drifting closer you see some sort of tensions emerging there's no
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direct sort of causation but this sort of things happen that you see tensions on the
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lac on the bound boundary with china so my sense is that going forward what you're going
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to see is that because this competition between china and the u.s becomes deeper and friction
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becomes far more intensified you will end up seeing china becoming increasingly more
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sensitive to anything that india does so just a sort of simple example in the last 10 days
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you've seen india impose some sort of restrictions on fdi essentially from china although the
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notification talks about countries sharing land borders with india but it's basically
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china at the same time you've seen a deal that's happened between go and facebook and
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that's sort of stuff that you will see you saw the outrage in india over hdfc sort of
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people's bank of china's increase of stake in hdfc even that's sort of a shift how that
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gets perceived in beijing would be largely in the context of well okay india is picking
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sides and the sensitivity to all that will increase and that then creates volatility
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in that relationship so that's how some bit of the geopolitics i sort of see playing out
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going forward and sort of leaving these major powers aside for a while which is the usa
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middle kingdom and the middle power as you put it how does one look at uh those institutions
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uh like the the united nations and like who those international institutions which sort
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of straddle geopolitical boundaries how are they impacted is there influence and credibility
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diminished by what has just happened you know how will that change going forward yeah i
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mean on the un side already the un was a project which was quite on its death row sort of so
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uh and with this uh and the whole role of world health organization and how it sort
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of played quite a disturbing role in all this in the initial phase has sort of taken the
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sheen of some of these uh multilateral organizations but that does not mean that multilateral institutions
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will end probably what we might see is that we might see a new kind of multilateralism
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uh which means that uh we won't have one global body but we might have some multilateral
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institutions which are centered around china and we might have some other multilateral
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institutions which continue to be centered around the u.s. so those sort of become the
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more important organizations for transnational cooperation rather than one body like the
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un and un as a world government all those ideas sort of go away when we are talking
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about so much of economic nationalism and we are talking about a world in which labor
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mobility and all will decrease yeah i think uh so i agree with pranay i mean i think uh
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so john maesham sort of captures that when he says things like you're likely to see bounded
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orders which are led by either the u.s. china or somebody else um so you'll see some of
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these other groupings but at the same time my sense is that you won't necessarily see
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uh there are some challenges which even transcend some of these bounded orders so covid is one
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challenge um so is climate change um and i think you're going to see uh greater diversity
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so you're going to see more of these multilateral organizations headed by certain largely led
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by certain countries but also you're going to see certain organizations which will require
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something greater than these bounded orders for people to work together on i don't know
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how that plays out but that's my sense that you will still given the nature of this particular
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challenge my hope is that people that you know states gradually sort of look past and
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say okay look on the economy i might need to have the circle of trust and therefore
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that is bounded by certain things so that you know wto might not be as effective as
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opposed to another sort of bounded institution which has say trust in states that have greater
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trust among each other whether it's say the western states western europe u.s japan south
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korea australia new zealand but on climate change i need something greater so therefore
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some of these broader institutions might actually survive and thrive but their mandate might
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shift yeah i actually think that action on climate change is going to slow down because
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of all this more friction so collaboration on all this building trust is going to become
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more difficult so yeah we require a transnational world cooperation on that front but that becomes
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more difficult with what has happened right so so my my sort of final question to you
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guys is a two-part question and perhaps predictable which is that okay right now we are sort of
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in a fog of war in terms of information there is an epistemic fog we don't really have
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a clear sense of what is happening which strategy is best to deal with the covid 19 where different
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countries are trying different levels of lockdowns or no lockdown we don't know what the final
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impact will be we don't know the mortality rate we don't know how widespread this will
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be and when we will come out of it right so a lot of unknown unknowns ahead as well so
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sort of looking to you know as little as two years in the future could you articulate what
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would be your worst case scenario and your best case scenarios and and we can start with
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you pranay yeah sort of the worst case scenario is that we actually end in this world where
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uh there is uh we the global recession sort of continues uh for a long time and because
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of that you know there is even more confrontation there is less mobility even covid 19 sort
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of continues for a longer time so that sort of blocks all our pathways to get back to
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any sense of normalcy so that is sort of the worst scenario and the accompanying thing
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would be india actually uh response to all this by using more economic nationalism by
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uh undergoing uh domestic strife etc right so that is sort of the absolute worst case
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scenario that i can think uh but the positive scenario would be that maybe we get over this
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uh not a v-shaped recovery but even if it is a delayed v-shaped recovery and india is
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able to use this opportunity this moment to do some of the reforms which it anyways had
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to do from a long time so that might uh help you know so there is a very interesting concept
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on this called two level games the idea being that this was a paper by robert patnam which
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said that actually international negotiations don't happen at the level of two negotiators
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talking itself but they also happen at two levels in the sense that the negotiator talks
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to the other country and the negotiator also has to talk to their domestic constituency
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right so uh now the fact that we had to do all these reforms on the economic side some
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of them can't be done now for example the labor reforms can't be done but land reforms
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can still be done in these uh situations so we can use this level one situation which
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is quite bad to sell the reforms at level two and to convince people the domestic stakeholders
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that if we don't get things right uh at this point of time we are going to have a really
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tough time and there's no way out right so this is that moment and if we are able to
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utilize that we might see a more positive and stronger india coming out of it um from
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my point of view uh the worst case scenario would be uh you know things open up and you
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have uh repeated and recurrent waves of infection which uh you know completely stop any sort
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of uh social sort of society getting back together and that then eventually leads to
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greater uh you know reactionary tendencies among states within sort of countries so for
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example you see much more economic nationalism you see says you see something that's happened
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in hungary where essentially uh all individual rights sort of you know systems democratic
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systems get sort of completely undermined and you have dictatorships or you have at
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least so-called strongmen leaders even consolidating power greater power and checks and balances
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get eroded uh in the name of national sort of revival and that happening in different
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parts of the world including in india another thing is that essentially something like that
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happens you end up seeing a complete erosion of this concept of individual rights where
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states sort of continue to over sort of overstretch uh into private lives uh you see an erosion
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of privacy uh through technology interventions at the moment all of us are talking about
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the use of apps and things like that and the use of technology to do contact tracing to
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track people and do all of that but uh where does this leave the idea of privacy and individual
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privacy going forward do these sort of how is this data stored in all of that and all
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of those sorts of things continue to become the new normal for individuals uh and eventually
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sort of conflict so conflict between states conflict between the u.s and china at the
#
moment i mean when you have any hear the narrative of somebody like lindsey grime in the u.s
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saying things like china is responsible for 30 40 000 american deaths directly responsible
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and as that narrative sort of takes hold um while you know there is better sense that
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exists at the moment how things shape up one doesn't know so my sense would be that those
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would be my worst case outcomes in terms of the best case outcomes um you know uh part
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of it is nature uh hopefully you know we develop the nature the kind of immunity that is needed
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uh hopefully the you know the nature of the virus is actually not as bad data right now
#
tells us that you know a large majority of cases are asymptomatic and they don't necessarily
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uh you know have any sort of adverse impacts on people uh so actually the you know the
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actual death toll in case code is not as bad uh and people can get back to work as quickly
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as possible life can get back to some degree of normalcy as quickly as possible we hopefully
#
develop a vaccine within the next year uh so people have been saying 12 to 18 months
#
for now three four months so hopefully within the time frame you actually get a vaccine
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and it can be administered mass basis so things can get back to some degree of normalcy within
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a year and a half or so and that you know the international order doesn't necessarily
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get as undermined i mean uh deglobalization perhaps will it will happen but it happens
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in a sense that select sectors are seen as far more important from national security
#
point of view but otherwise you have trade which resumes you know those ideas of free
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trade don't necessarily go away um so that would be my first uh that would be my best
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case scenario where at least things come back to somewhat normalcy there's a new normal
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but the new normal is not as bad uh as it can be uh and the idea of international institutions
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still being needed uh and states still needing to work together uh sort of survives this
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pandemic on that hopeful note thanks so much guys for joining me again i mean this of course
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was remote and i hope at some point we can again sit in the same studio and record together
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so have a good lockdown thank you thanks amit
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if you enjoyed listening to this episode hop on over to twitter and follow pranay at pranay
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kotas one word and you can follow manoj at the china dude all one word the china dude
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you should also search for his weekly newsletter eye on china and subscribe to it absolutely
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outstanding you can follow me on twitter at amit varma a m i t v a r m a you can browse
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