0:00 And there are many things we can criticize Modi for. I don't want to come across as a Modi apologist. I just want to be clear that the things we typically criticize Modi for are not the things he's done wrong. Uh they are in fact um places where we simply misunderstand the fault lines of Indian politics because we try to take our own fault lines and imagine them on India. [Applause] [Music] Welcome to the focus. I'm Dr. John Brunie. India is often called the
0:45 world's largest democracy. It's a rising power, a member of the quadrilateral dialogue, otherwise known as the Quad, a US strategic partner. And yet, it's also friendly with Russia, buying oil through Russian shadow fleets. And it's a country recently field tested in battle in a brief but tense clash with Pakistan. In today's episode, we cut through all of this with Professor Salvador Babones, one of the boldest voices on Indian foreign policy. This is the hinge of Indopacific security unfiltered. Salvador, welcome to the focus. Great to talk to you. Salvador, India is often touted in Washington as a key Indopacific partner, but from your perspective, is America misreading the nature of this relationship?
1:30 Well, the first thing I have to point out is that everyone says India is the world's largest democracy. That's largely irrelevant. Big countries are democracies, small countries are democracies. India is the world's poorest democracy. The poorest the poorest country that has had well-institutionalized governance through change of governments through elections now for 77 years. So that's really the key fact to know and as such it does share a similar values to the United States or to Australia or to Japan for that matter. uh in fact you know India Indians themselves often like to claim that India is not a liberal western democracy it's its own unique democracy and they're flat wrong if you go through
2:16 the development of Indian democracy its institutions its values its constitution everything about it is very much what we would find is familiar in the west it's not a Chinese style people's democracy or a Victor Orban Hungarian illiberal democracy It is a classic liberal democracy um just like our liberal democracies and so it is a very important part of maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific. That said, India you described it as a partner that may be appropriate. It's certainly not an ally. Many people use the word ally and it's it's not an ally. It is a let's say fellow traveler. I think even partner is probably a little too much. Um, India
3:02 faces the same challenges that you know the west does. It faces a challenge in China. It faces a challenge from uh Islamist terrorism. Uh it faces challenges from uh social disorganization and failed states in Southeast Asia. And those challenges are fundamentally the same challenges faced you know by the United States, by Australia, by Western countries seeking uh to keep the Indo-Pacific well safe for democracy. You know, there have been a lot of criticisms of uh Prime Minister Modi and the BJP and there have been suggestions that Prime Minister Modi is not a traditional Democrat. Is this true in your opinion? And has the BJP government actually changed the
3:49 institutions and values of India? There's been there has been a change in the rhetoric in India and that change in rhetoric is one from what we might call English stan the the old India that's a an heir to colonial era institutions and ways of thinking and frankly publishing in English primarily and wanting to argue things out in the English language newspapers to what you might call Hindustan uh in India that's much more demodic much more based on the Hindi language media that is much more concerned with frankly Hindu religious imagery rather than quoting western philosophers. Naraj Modi is much more likely to quote uh Hindu scriptures. Uh that said uh institutionally there's
4:34 nothing very different from what you would find in the west. The difference is in the electorate. Uh the average Indian is very poor by our standards, highly traditional by our standards and extraordinarily religious by our standards. and that poor traditional religious electorate has different preferences from what we might find from an electorate in Australia, the United States or or even in Japan. And it's funny you you led with the quad because a lot of the same criticisms people raise against India, we could raise against Japan. And a lot of them really have to do with Japan being a traditional non-western society in a way that's not really familiar to the Anglo-American democracies of the West. But in all of these cases, the
5:20 difference is not in the institutions or the processes of democracy or the safeguards of democracy. It's in the decisions and choices of the electorate. Modi is very much playing to a traditional Hindustani way of seeing things. Where does Modi stand and the BJP more generally stand on issues like India's cast structure? They're absolutely opposed to cast hierarchy and that's one of the funny things that it's difficult for us again as Westerners to go into understand Indian politics. Narendra Modi is definitely on the ultraconservative side of Indian politics. He's on the Hindu side of polit of Indian politics and we've been taught that oh conservative Hindus would embrace cast
6:05 hierarchy. Quite the contrary actually Hindu so Hindu reformers have been working to undermine cast hierarchy for more than a hundred years now. And in fact in India the often repeated phrase this is not my formulation this is the standard formulation of Indian political pundits is that Narendra Modi has substituted religion for cast and that he sought to unify people across Hindu faith instead of dividing them on the basis of cast. Now the main opposition parties by contrast not the Congress party the Congress party is not a cast-based party but most of the other opposition parties in India are in fact castbased parties that is they're parties of a particular cast who promote their own cast
6:52 interests. Uh so whatever else and there are many things we can criticize Modi for I don't want to come across as a Modi apologist. I just want to be clear that the things we typically criticize Modi for are not the things he's done wrong. Uh they are in fact um places where we simply misunderstand the fault lines of Indian politics because we try to take our own fault lines and imagine them on India. Salvatore in India there is a slow burning insurgency with a group called the Knaxelites. and for our audience uh they would be considered neoauists or some sort of communist confabulation now they've been around for quite some time you say that the opposition groups apart
7:39 from congress would be drawn from cast in many of them not not all of them not not all of them but would the nexalites be one of them that are uh nexites are for the most part a prescribed group they don't participate in Indian politics and that's one of the ways that India has been downgraded on international democracy rankings is by prohibiting terrorist linked parties from participating in the political process. Now there are two thoughts on that. The thought in Northern Ireland long was you know reconciliation is fostered by having the political arm of the terrorist group invited into politics. In India by contrast and in here it's the same as in Germany terrorist links groups are excluded from politics. So the nxelites are not welcome in Indian politics. It's hard to see where they stand. That said, they're
8:25 not a castoriented group. They actually are much more religion-oriented group. We we usually would think of Mauism and evangelical Christianity as being opposing forces. And in fact, the Mauists initially started saying that they were uh absolute atheists, you know, towing the communist line until they realized they got no support among tribals in the northeast of India. So then they adopted Christianity. So now they're Christian Mauists, whatever that means. But their barrier to them participating in politics is has been their historical and until very recently continuing involvement in terrorism. Now there's been a peace agreement just this year. Uh knacks have come in from the cold and it's expected that they'll join politics now that the active insurgency
9:11 seems to be over. Uh but you know where they fit in India's uh cast hierarchy. The northeast is a bit unique. It's tribal. Ethnically it's much more similar to Myanmar than to the rest of India and it's not particularly Hindu. Uh so Cass doesn't really enter the equation in the in the main nulate areas. Salvador Modi is uh by all accounts extremely popular among Hindus. But how is he viewed by India's Muslim population? He is not very popular among Muslims and he's widely vilified by Muslim civil society groups and Muslim religious leaders. Not all of them. Uh so for example he has been embraced by Sufi Muslims in India uh largely because Sufi Muslims are often persecuted by the majority Sunni Muslims in India. So
9:56 there are these internal divisions within Islam as well as within uh Hindu faith. That said uh he certainly does very little to reach out to Muslim voters. Uh the narrative coming from the BJP is we're all Indian and there are no differentiations. It's very much a you know French uh ideal of of a you know I a biz well like in France of a secular society but a secular secularism being enforced specifically on Muslims. So just like French secularism is not really enforced very much against Catholics in France. It's always the cry against Muslims in France. In the same way Modi and the BJP have embraced secularism, but everybody knows they've embraced secularism as a
10:46 you know bit of a uh cudgel to uh to hit Muslim religious leaders with. Uh that said, it's difficult to say what's good or bad. The Congress party, the main opposition party in India, um has embraced Islamism or separate Islamic personal laws in the interest of reaching out to a Muslim voter base. Now most of us in Australia would regard it as monstrous that you know if a Hindu woman wants a divorce she goes to a civil court but if a Muslim woman wants a divorce she you know her husband can simply divorce her in front of an imam with no further procedures that she can be disinherited because she's a woman that she has no control of her children because in the Muslim law the children are the um wards of the father not of
11:31 the mother now those are things that we would find unacceptable. Narendra Modi has pushed what's called a uniform civil code. The idea that everybody, Muslims included, should be bound by a secular civil code. But let's not make him too much of a liberal hero. His reason for doing that uh is to vilify Muslim institutions and to attract Hindu voters. So these are very complex issues. It's difficult to say who's in the right or the wrong. I've written on this myself that, you know, can we support a good law being proposed for bad reasons? Uh the reasons are clearly bad. I I mean, the reasons that the BJP wants a uniform civil code is clearly to other Muslims,
12:18 but it's good law, right? Uh we should all want a uniform civil code in our democratic countries. Many other uh BJP initiatives have that same smell of uh they pass the literal test, but they're not as uh they don't come from as liberal uh a motivation as we in the west might like. Salvador as a democracy uh what can you say about India's opposition as it's currently structured? I mean the Congress party had been the dominant political force in India up until the the the rise of the BJP and Narendra Modi. So what what does the opposition actually stand for? What are its policy
13:03 planks and what is its vision for India? I mean if if one were to be in India as a voting person, what would you be voting for against the BJP? Well, that's the Congress's chief problem is that it doesn't seem to stand for anything. Uh, it used to stand for a light state socialism of state ownership of industry, but that's gone. It was actually a Congress prime minister, Man Singh, who uh was most well as finance minister most responsible for dismantling what they call the license Raj of people only being able to engage in business if they have a government license. later as prime minister Manwan Singh privatized state industries. So that old Congress brand of a you know
13:49 Indian indigenous socialism uh that has mostly disappeared not entirely. There's still a lot of Congress stalwarts who want the Congress to be more of a socialist party but it simply hasn't behaved that way. It's become more of a new labor sort of party. That said, it hasn't replaced that with anything. The Gandhi family mainly trades on its fame. Uh of course Rahul Gandhi the current opposition leader is the son of uh uh Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi uh who Rajiv Gandhi's former prime minister Sonia Gandhi has been the force behind the throne for the last 30 years in the Congress party and before that his grandmother was Indira Gandhi and his grand his greatgrandfather was Jaharanu the independence leader uh no relation
14:36 to Mahatma Gandhi the Gandhi family uh Neu's daughter Indira married a Gandhi unrelated to Mahatma Gandhi, Fose Gandhi. Uh so it's a family dynasty that commands loyalty as a family dynasty and runs the party. Now that's fairly typical in the developing world and particularly in South Asia where if you look at Sri Lankan politics at Pakistani politics at Bangladeshi politics you'll see the same family names uh recycled all the time because political parties in most of South Asia have been for the most part family parties. Uh the BJP is the great exception to that. The BJP has a very coherent ideology. It's an ideology that some wildly embrace, others flee from, but it's a very clear ideology of
15:25 uniting India around a Hindu civilizational core. They no longer say that uh in their official pronouncements they're a fully secular party, but everybody knows it's the Saffron party or the Hindu party in India. uh they certainly trade on that identity and they have a series of core issues that they have uh been pursuing consistently for 30 or 40 years. Um one India nationalism so Kashmir is part of India they uh abregated article 370 of the Indian constitution which had created separate institutions for Kashmir and Jammu and Kashmir. Now Jammu and Kashmir are governed as a part of the unitary Indian state. Uh they had long insisted they wanted a temple in Aoja. It's the
16:10 birthplace as they see it of uh Lord Rahm, the Indian god Rama. Uh there had been a mosque on that site for the last 400 years. The mosque was torn down by BJP linked activists, not by the BJP. I should hasten to add the and the but that was done in the 1990s and you know we now have seen the rebuilt temple at Aayocha. And their third big issue has been the uniform civil code fundamentally done with the attitude if Hindus have to have a civil code everybody Muslims um should have to be under the civil code and those three key issues have been its key issues when it wasn't in power and now that it's been in power it's delivered on them. Okay. Well, um, interestingly enough, when we talk about these kind of political dynamics, you know, here in
16:58 the west, we're always trying to split people up and identify people by various categories and it doesn't matter what part of the political spectrum you're from, that's what we do. Uh, the Indians seem to be pushing in a different direction and the BJP in particular by what you're saying, they're trying to find ways, connivances if you will, to bring people together in spite of their differences. That will be an interesting experiment to see play out in the near future. Anyway, look, if we can turn then to strategy for the moment, you know, uh when we were talking earlier, we were discussing the difference between India and the United States in terms of strategy. They're not an American partner, but Americans like alliances. India doesn't do alliances. So, how do we reconcile that? Is the US ready to
17:44 work with a partner it can't fully control? It's been very difficult for the American uh security establishment to understand India and that goes very deep. There are very few India experts in the United States who are not themselves of Indian origin. And of course you can be of Indian origin and be an expert on India but inevitably uh subjective points of view creep in. Uh it's very difficult to find what you see for China. Regarding China, you can find a paniply of American, Australian, foreign scenologists who are not people of Chinese origin who have devoted their lives to studying China. There just isn't really that cadre of chi of India experts in the United States. And as a result, there's a real misunderstanding
18:30 or a very poor understanding of India. uh the fact that India won't be an ally um is something that Americans find very troubling because they don't they simply don't understand the Indian context and what things mean in India. uh it's you know Indian history is one that is very I mean it's obviously long and extensive and uh you know goes back into the midst of time and it's very well known by Indians who are an extraordinarily patriotic uh nationalistic population and let's just face it I'm American Americans are all about today right and not about thousands of years of historical baggage and so Americans have a lot of trouble understanding this
19:17 baggage that comes from Indians wanting to pursue uh their own independent way in the world. Uh Salvatore, Indians are a growing immigrant community in the United States. Is this not a resource that the US State Department can tap in some way to sort of fill that that gap that you just said that exists? It is a resource but and again I I it sounds very racist to say it but it's simply a fact that people are subjective and inevitably people from India will tell you about their India and it would be just like saying that well just like one time American foreign policy towards the Soviet Union was entirely informed by Russian immigrants and those Russian immigrants well they knew a lot about
20:04 Russia if you ask them about Toltoy, they could give you a dissertation on Toltoy. But were they really entirely unbiased and objective when they thought about the Soviet Union? Probably not. Now, it's not as extreme with uh Indian Americans or Indian Australians. But the problem is still there that Indians in Australia and the United States are not people who've studied India. They're people who are from India. And that comes with all the baggage, all of the subjective impressions, all of all of the, you know, all of their personal viewpoints as opposed to a a pure objective scientific, you know, cold hard scientific perspective, which I have to emphasize comes from American
20:49 Sinology. There's incredible American expertise and for that matter incredible Australian expertise on China, but note that it comes from non-Chinese Australians who've learned about China as an external object of study. Um, all of the major China study centers in Australia are actually run by Australians, not by Chinese, not not sorry, not by people of Chinese extraction, not by Australians of Chinese extraction, but by Australians of European and other extraction. Uh now is that necessary? It's hard to say. But the promised dividend of having lots of highly successful Indian-Americans and Indian Australians simply hasn't paid off in understanding at the highest level because I think inevitably
21:36 they're playing Indian politics at the same time that they're giving advice whereas you know again America's not playing Chinese politics when they give advice on China. Is it also a case salvator of just too much information? I mean, you know, the the the threat of the day is of course China. So, everyone's uh national security apparatus, foreign policy apparatus is geared toward understanding China just as we did do once with the Soviet Union. And what we did during the war on terror with Arabs, you know, there were schools of thought that were developed to objectively look at these particular threat vectors, if you will. Um but you know India well it's not a threat it's not a friend uh it's it's all probably a bit too hard and a bit
22:24 too much and a bit too complex. Uh look I think the effort just hasn't been made. Uh I rarely not rarely never uh see a potential PhD student who wants to do a thesis related to India who's not of Indian extraction. And that's a a problem. And it's not just me. It's all across the field. Now there are plenty of non-Indians who study Sanskrit because they're fascinated by ancient Sanskrit texts and you know not a problem. Uh there are plenty who study medieval India but when you talk about studies contemporary political and international relations and sociological studies of contemporary India the entire cadre of expertise is of Indian origin and it's
23:11 very thin. uh it is not a major priority. There aren't the India studies centers. I mean Australia doesn't have an India studies center. Australia has a Australia India Institute in Melbourne but it's entirely dedicated to uh promoting things like business connections and athletic con you know cultural connections. It's not a research center. There's not a single research center in Australia. There are very few in the United States. There's a very prominent one at University of Pennsylvania. Uh there's one I believe at uh I'm sorry it's either at Stanford or Berkeley I get I'm not sure which one in in the Bay Area but they're very few compared again to the number of China study centers. Uh and this is not just something new. This is something that goes back historically a long way. Uh the US and the Western world have been
23:56 engaged with China uh for more than 100 or 150 years. India was the British backyard and so India attracted a lot of cultural study especially in the United Kingdom. There's enormous expertise on Indian religions on Indian languages and a lot of that is British expertise but not on contemporary India. It just hasn't been a focus of people's studies. You know it's interesting when I was a lecture at the University of Adelaide um we were doing Asian studies and of course you know India does come up from time to time and the thing is that this was often a lament that not enough effort has been put in to Australia's relationship with India because the only thing that we really know about India is that they like to play cricket and perhaps perhaps they also like to drink beer and uh and that and that's really
24:43 about it and curry and don't forget curry. They make a mean curry. So, so our our knowledge of India is very fasile to a to a great degree and it still remains that considering what you've just said in many places. Look, I hear lots of colonial era generalizations or neu era generalizations about India all the time. There's very little knowledge of even the most basic facts about modern India. I mean, even simple statistical facts are poorly understood. People love the stories um but they don't run the numbers. And again, sorry to keep bringing up China, but that contrasts heavily with China, which is a very numbersoriented, statisticsoriented field. Yes, there are the Scinologists who focus on, you know, what's happening in in Beijing, but there's also a lot of
25:31 economic study of China. There's also a lot of sociological study of China. And again, we we just don't see that in India. I I you can't name an Australian economist who's an expert on the Indian economy. it it just doesn't and there are very few in the US and what very few there are in the US as far as I know are all of Indian origin again not to beat that drum relentlessly but um it does have that aspect of of naval gazing about it yes it does yes it does well look let's uh now turn to sort of international relations but at the leadership level if we look at the leadership chemistry of you know the obvious ones Modi on the one side and Trump on the other. Was there ever genuine strategic alignment
26:16 there or was it all just about good optics? Uh so they seem to get along very well and I have no doubt about that that it's a genuine you genuinely warm relationship. They both like spectacle. Uh when Anthony Albanes visited India and they took him around in the uh it's like a Pope mobile except it's a cricket mobile. They went around the their the Narendra Modi stadium. I kid you not. uh with a crowd of you know 120,000 you waving and he seemed very uncomfortable and this is a new experience for him right he's never this is not something Australian leaders do for Donald Trump that was very natural it was great you know let let's go around the stadium and wave to the adoring fans so I think they get along very well that said mostly what the US seems to want from India is
27:02 that it would buy American fighter jets you know that the F-35 be sold to India there's a strong strong emphasis on defense procurement and American defense firms, the the big the big uh defense contractors being upset that India has bought French equipment, that India has bought Russian equipment. Uh that it hasn't bought a lot of US equipment and certainly not the big ticket items. It's bought lots of like small arms from the US and you artillery and now there's some helicopters from the US but India hasn't been spending the big money on US defense procurement and India has the largest defense procurement budget I'm sorry defense import budget in the world so it's a big potential customer that
27:47 seems to drive the relationship in fact the US think tanks that have a focus on India those those think tanks seem to overwhelmingly receive money from defense contractors. Now, I don't know that for certain. I can only see that in the character of the reports they produce. Uh but that seems to be the basis for the relationship that the United States wants. Uh thus the United States has been very upset that India has continued to rely on some Russian equipment uh or for that matter that India buys French jet fighters and submarines. But yeah, but there is a there is a subtext here which we haven't raised and that of course is India's entire rationale strategically is to maintain strategic autonomy and so therefore I
28:33 would imagine that it would not be in any Indian prime minister's best interest to be too reliant on an external supplier one external supplier in particular. So, for instance, uh you know, when you buy the JSF, the F-35 Lightning, you're not just buying an aircraft that you can fiddle around with, you're buying an entire supply chain from the United States, which will then put a number of limits upon how India will use those fighter planes. Exactly. Now, if you're if you're a guy that's, you know, in the Indian Department of Defense and you kind of think to yourself, well, you know, we want to maintain our strategic autonomy. What is America doing for us if we buy into this supply chain? Will they let us do what the Israelis do with their JSFS? I don't
29:18 think so. So, there would be doubts about the veracity of going down that particular path, I would imagine. So, as inviting as it sounds for India to buy American products like JSF, I just don't see it happen. Look, there is a lingering Indian suspicion of the United States that's shared by uh all political parties in India. There there's no there is no rahrah America uh political party in India. That said, there are also no anti-American political parties in India that have any ch. I mean, the communist part is anti-American, but they have no chance of taking power. So, it's uh it's not an anti-American country, but it is a it's a country that adores America, that idolizes America, but that uh
30:04 doesn't want to be beholdened to America. And I think many people in India you know fear that they will end up living in an American world or be at the mercy of the United States. Uh so yes the strategic autonomy the words you used are the words that are commonly used for this but it's reflected in practical terms in the fact that India strongly prefers cash and carry sort of defense procurement. So again countries like Russia, France and Israel. I think those are the big three suppliers to India who will sell them the equipment and let India you take it and do what it wants. no strings, no strings attached. Uh what they have bought from the US are largely you know uh objects that uh you know infantry assault rifles, you know, things like that that really aren't
30:52 subject to potential US restrictions. Um also there is the little problem with Russia. India has very close ties to Russia and we'll we'll we'll dig down a little bit into that uh just after we pass this point. But I mean I I imagine that there would be because the Americans are very um nervous about losing their IP to a country like Russia by selling to a friendly third country like India and all of a sudden you know the next generation of Russian war plananes come out and oh my god they look very similar to the JSF. Where did they get that idea from? So is there I mean obviously Loheed Martin and the US government would be very concerned with regard to the Indians managing to lock down that sort of American technology because you know it is an important
31:39 piece of kit for the United States um and probably will be for at least the next 25 years. Right. Well, but they're still pushing hard to sell it. I'm not sure how concerned they are. What they've been strongly pressuring Indians to do is to give up the Russian S400 uh anti-aircraft missile systems. Uh and that I think is a bit I mean I understand the rationale. The rationale is that S400 data could be fed back to Russia and help Russia detect or understand how to detect F-35s if F-35s enter the Indian arsenal or any other American uh you aircraft. However, uh I've actually argued and argued in print that it is beneficial for the United States to have India maintaining these Russian uh supply
32:24 chains. And that may sound very strange, but the fact is that India is buying them for use against China. And if India doesn't buy them, China will. Uh so China has the previous generation Russian anti-aircraft missiles and its own Chinese clones of those missiles. the S300 missiles. Uh India has made a condition of buying S400s that they not be sold to China or Pakistan. And so as long as India is buying them, Russia has one customer in the region and that customer is not China. The minute India stops buying them, uh Russia will need to make money where it can make money. And so the idea of keep you know using India using a low level of India Russia collaboration to prevent an even
33:10 higher level of China Russia collaboration while it may be unpalatable and leave a a bad taste in the mouth. The fact is it's better for the west and better for the world if Russia remains a uh an independent country as opposed to becoming some kind of Chinese vassal state. And really the one country that's doing more than any other to prevent Russia from completely sinking into Chinese hands um is India. So, you know, for good or for bad, I mean, there are there are people who fantasize about a complete Russian collapse and Putin being ejected from office if he didn't get the oil money or the defense purchases from India. Uh, I
33:55 think it's more likely that Russia would simply turn even more to China if it didn't get what it if it didn't get any support from India. And let's be clear, India is not providing some enormous buoy to the Russian economy. India is not rich enough for that. It's a lifeline. and keeping that lifeline open again, however unpalatable it may be to people like me at least who strongly condemn Russia's behavior uh in its invading Ukraine and its behavior vullying visa v its neighbors. Um just from a from a absolutely again cold hard rational perspective maybe it's better to keep Russia let India keep Russia afloat. That is interesting. Okay. Well, I mean I I just want to use this little anecdote here and that is
34:42 we we've gone through a similar sort of situation with JSF and S400 before but with Turkey and Turkey is a NATO member and that's completely complicated that relationship between Ankara and Washington DC. Um I I suppose similar things now are said about let's keep Turkey sweet, let them play around with some Russian kit, maybe we learn something from them, so on and so forth. But ultimately there's always that there must be always that anxiety that something important will slip through to the other side in spite of how controlled you think things are. So anyway, well there's there's one huge difference I'd like to remind everyone about and that is that Turkey although it has elections is a harshly authoritarian
35:28 state. India is routinely accused of being an electoral autocracy. But I mean I think I show very conclusively in my book and I'll I'll take the the opportunity to plug the book uh that when we go to the numbers um India is a liberal democracy that has real elections where you know the opposition where where it basically shares our values and Turkey for all it does have elections and the most recent elections in Turkey were competitive. Uh I I not sure I would trust Turkey in the same way I wouldn't trust I wouldn't trust Turkeykey's monetary institutions the press in Turkey the opposition parties in Turkey the judiciary in Turkey the same way I trust those institutions in India that the press the
36:15 judiciary uh the opposition are keeping the the government honest in a way that may not be true of Turkey. So, you know, yes, there are parallels between the two situations, but there are also fundamental differences of values. India is currently buying oil using the so-called shadow fleet, allowing Russia to skirt Western sanctions. Is this trade in oil indirectly funding Putin's war in Ukraine? It certainly is. Uh the Indian response to that is Europeans spend far much more on Russian natural gas than India spends on Russian oil. Um yet those European countries have have a car have a carveout from the same kind of attention because they supposedly can't go anywhere else. Uh you know India is a
37:03 very poor country. GDP per capita is roughly on a par with that of the continent of Africa. Uh and getting cheap Russian oil is a big boon because they pay they buy that oil at a serious discount from global oil prices. Now whether they should or should not join western sanctions uh is a matter for Indians to debate and decide but I'll tell you from the Indian side the way they see it is entirely put up or shut up to Europeans that if Europeans don't care enough about Ukraine to cut off their export imports from Russia why should India which has no quarrel with Russia and that's something we we really have to remember is there's there's no animosity or ill between India and Russia and there's no
37:48 particular alliance between India and Ukraine. So if even Europeans who are closely aligned with Ukraine who've taken millions of Ukrainian refugees who are deeply involved in the Ukraine war, if even they're buying Russian hydrocarbons, Russian energy, again Indians, and I'm not making the argument, I'm merely reporting how Indians of all political parties see it. um why should they be the ones to cut off themselves from Russian oil? Salvatore, how does Washington tolerate this arrangement? I mean, they've basically planted their flag on the hill uh in terms of where they see Russia and Ukraine, but they're also pressuring other countries not to trade with Russia.
38:35 Um is is the US making quiet exceptions for India because of its strategic significance? think uh the US is making exceptions for India because it wants to sell defense equipment to India. I mean it's a very blunt statement. Uh yes I I mean it there's a strong um so if we go back to the Biden administration during the Biden administration there was the rep the Republican party in the US which is generally closer to defense contractors was entirely happy for Narendra Modi to visit Washington to give a speech to the joint sessions of joint session of congress uh to meet at the white house and they were all rah rahrrah India uh the democratic party split the more human rights focused half the Democratic party were very anti-India and anti-Modi
39:21 and they uh they um boycotted some events whereas the defense contractor funded half of the democratic party uh welcomed Narendra Modi the positive side for Modi no one ever said and I found this shocking no one ever said we support India because they're a fellow democracy with a strong human rights record what they said was well despite what we hear about India's human rights record um it's an important partner, by which they mean a important customer. And it's just that simple in US politics. There are very powerful groups in America um who want to sell things primarily defense equipment um to India and so they advocate for India. I as a social scientist just find that shocking
40:06 because I've gone through the data on India's human rights record and it's very solid. I mean there there there's just nothing to the anti-India human rights claims. But they've been repeated and repeated and washed and washed so many times that they've simply entered everybody's consciousness. You know, a thought just occurred to me and that is if uh America manages to sell the JSF to India, will that then put constraints upon its tolerance with regard to India's relations with Russia? Do you think there's a quid proquo here? Yeah, look, India, you can buy my JSF and that's all very good and fine. Oh, but by the way, now that you're in the American supply chain, you know, that sort of thing that you're doing with Russia and the shadow fleets, I'm not so
40:51 pleased with that. Can we do something to ameliorate your pro-Russian leaning? Do you think that buying the JSF could also be a trap for India where it then has to tow an American line or else spare parts, maintenance for the JSF disappears? It just disappears. Look, I I don't think it's going to happen and for precisely those reasons uh that the pressure can be exerted once India joins the program. That said, um the F-35 is increasingly yesterday's fighter. Uh you know, new concepts are being developed. You know, with by the time India were to buy it, it would probably no longer be the frontline American fighter. Both the F-22 and the, you know, F-35 are likely to be replaced sometime in the 2030s.
41:38 And if the F-35 ever entered India service, it would be in the 2030s. I mean, there's no chance of it happening in the 2020s. Um, so maybe it won't be that important by then. Maybe Russia won't even be an enemy by then. I mean, we just don't, you know, we're looking pretty far out into the future. Just remember that the F-35 is is emblematic, but the defense procurement relationship between the US and India goes much deeper than that. And there's a whole list of things that American contractors would like to sell to India. The the big one right now that's being discussed is howitzers and you know howitzers are not something that most of us have ever heard of never mind think about but of course the Indian army is procuring howitzers and uh they have a contract right and these these contracts the US is as the world's largest defense
42:24 exporter the US is not all about just one plane right it's about a whole paniply of companies and equipment uh that want to sell into the again I want to emphasize the world's largest defense importer I India is the country that um buys the most. Uh they're often they're usually neck andneck with Saudi Arabia uh for being the world's biggest defense importers. They are. But you know unlike Saudi Arabia, India still is considering itself a strategically autonomous player in the international community. And so both of those things tend to be rubbing up against each other. whether or not you'll have a a smoother entrance of India and you know a much more mature uh situation between New Delhi on the one
43:10 side and Washington on the other. That's for time to tell but at the moment it just does doesn't seem like a really good fit right now. Probably not. And look the fact is India is a poor country and the Rafael the French fighter that they buy is probably more than fully beats anything that the Chinese can uh put in the air in numbers. I know the Chinese have some, you know, extraordinary technology where they have one or two examples, but they haven't industrialized these technologies. And, you know, if India can fly a Raphael fighter and have the S400 systems and can continue to buy Israeli technology because they put Israeli technology in the in the nose cones of those Rafals, uh, they can probably keep ahead of China and Pakistan and that's all they really need
43:56 to do. Remember, India is not seeking air dominance halfway around the world. They're they're not going to, you know, the United States can bomb Iran uh from 12,000 mi away. India is not going to bomb Paraguay, right? It really has very limited uh defense interests. Uh that is preventing a Pakistani or a Chinese invasion. uh launching these short range retribution strikes if uh Pakistan has any terrorist activity in India as happened last month um and maintaining security on its border with Myanmar and Bangladesh. These are you know for the most part uh not anywhere as demanding as what the US and NATO seek to do. You're listening to the Focus podcast. I'm your host John Brun. If you're finding these deeper global
44:42 conversations useful, please support us by subscribing on your favorite platform and sharing this episode. You can also catch up on previous episodes at sage international.com.au by clicking on the media center drop-own menu and clicking either video or podcasts. Now, back to the conversation with Professor Salvatore Babones. Salvatore, you did make mention about China and Pakistan and of course they had that recent recent clash in early May of this year. Um the Rafal did not turn out to be the weapon the Indians were looking for apparently because the Pakistanis fielded China's J10C's not their topline models and yet it seemed to have outperformed the Rafals.
45:28 Do you think that this may have changed the balance of power in favor of China and Pakistan at least temporarily? So first I should emphasize that that I'm not a military aviation expert. All I know is what I read about these. I've heard conflicting accounts and you know modern air warfare is much more about uh action you over the horizon action in a distance than about dog fights or anything like that. So what happened and what missile technology side had honestly I I really have no broader expertise on that. What I can say is it's clear that India met its strategic objectives with relatively minor losses on its side. uh it struck deep within Pakistan at uh either terrorist camps or facilities that were used to support terrorism. The US and most western
46:13 observers seem to broadly agree that these were terrorism related facilities, not just quote unquote innocent, you know, Pakistani army uh facilities and it struck them with very little losses of its own uh on its own side. Now uh the fact that a country loses one or two or however many aircraft in a war the the goal is to meet their strategic objectives and India seems to be certainly Indians are very happy and feel that they have met their strategic objectives. Um beyond that I'm I can't really second guess whether how many fighters they may have lost and whether it was worth the loss whether they were you know put in danger. I mean I'll just change the subject a little. Uh I know there's been a lot of debate all over
46:59 the military blogosphere about the future of the tank and how many tanks have been destroyed and in Ukraine and people forget well the whole purpose of a tank is to go into danger where human beings can't go and in a way you know the whole purpose of the aircraft is to reach out into dangerous spaces. So has has the Rafal been successful? I have no idea. Was India successful in its strikes? Yeah, clearly so. Oh yeah, absolutely. I I'd agree with you on that. Uh I'd also say that, you know, we in the West tend to fetishize uh defense products um because they look good, they make us feel good when we look at them, and somehow we tend to believe everything that the arms suppliers tell us that these things can do. Not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but let me tell you, you know,
47:46 uh a good sales pitch, well, the Americans can put one on, that's for sure. And so can the Europeans when it comes to arms and who's better at what. But the thing is that weapons are meant to be destroyed. And so long as overall strategic and tactical objectives are met, um the losses don't really or ought not to matter. But they do today because everything costs so much. I mean, what is it? Um the entire package for one JSF. And let's see if I can get my brain wrapped around it. Somewhere in the vicinity of uh over $und00 million an aircraft, that's a lot of money. And for a poor country like India, that's a lot of money. uh the Rafals may come in at a a significant lower cost. So losing these aircraft in combat, that's going to hurt. It's going to hurt a bit. Well, also look, it's clear India does not
48:33 have the same dominance over Pakistan and China that the United States and Israel have over Iran, but no one would expect India to have that kind of dominance. It's a it's increasingly a peer-to-peer relationship. And remember the Chinese economy Pakistan for those who don't know Pakistan is effectively a cat's paw for China in in in these regards. Um for those you know who aren't doing the math uh you know China is still about four times as rich as India. So if India is simply able to hold its own um that in itself is is enough that that is India seems to have no appetite for foreign military adventurism for
49:18 offensive action. Uh it has in well since independence it's only struck back when attacked. It's never initiated uh attacks without provocation and there are no signs that it ever would initiate attacks without provocation. So again like what's enough defense for India? India does not need the capability to do deep long range stealth attacks uh in pursuit of global geopolitical objectives. Um all it really needs is to defend itself and India seems to be doing a reasonably good job. But there is the argument Salvatore that if India was going to become in the American mindset a bullwalk in the Indoacific against China, they'll have to be a bit more ambitious to support American strategic objectives. They can't just
50:04 sit on their haunches and say, "Yeah, that's enough uh technology for us. We don't need any more than that because our ambitions are very light." But they're wanting to put their, you know, uh best foot forward with the Americans and the Americans will expect them Yeah. to play. Oh, you're absolutely right. But the key is in what you just said, American strategic objectives and those aren't and those aren't Indian strategic objectives and India I mean I'm sorry to break anyone's hearts back home in the US but India is never going to pursue American strategic objectives. India is not going to be let's say in Australia where it was shocking that you know the Labor government here in Australia did not send a frigot to join US patrols in the uh Arabian Sea and and the and the Red
50:51 Sea. It was shocking because Australia has always viewed its defense as being centrally connected to keeping the US on side and you know the deal is that Australia serves American strategic objectives and by being a you know loyal companion in doing so it receives the benefits of sitting under the American umbrella and that that may not be an attractive thing to many people but that's been the fact of Australian history since World War II. Um, India is never going to be like that. You know, India has its own goals and those broadly align with American goals. That is containing China, preventing escalating Chinese influence in Southeast Asia and South Asia, uh,
51:38 preventing any further expansionism from Pakistan. Um, well, as long as America is willing to deputize India on those goals, the relationship will go well. If the United States wants more, if it wants India to join any global crusade, it's it's simply going to be disappointed uh in that and that's an that's simply a non-starter in Indian politics for any political party. I mean, it would be political suicide for any party in India to say that it wanted to join the coalition of the willing, whether it's in in Ukraine or in Iraq or you against Iran. It it simply won't happen. It would be profoundly unpopular. Well, while we talk about all of this, uh, Salvador, you mentioned that Pakistan is kind of acting as, uh,
52:26 China's cat's paw, but Pakistan is also a nuclear power in its own right. Yeah. Um, and you know, its governance is not particularly stable, which would mean that both Beijing and New Delhi would be looking very carefully at what was going on within the borders of of Pakistan. um because of this tension between Pakistan and India realistically speaking how much of its strategic attention can be played elsewhere I mean how much of India's defense forces their defense forces are large by any standard but how much of that will be geared toward taking care of its most immediate threat in Pakistan and how much of that will be you know siphoned off into the mountains where they share a very small
53:13 border with China in order to you know plate the Americans and their their strategic aims and objectives. Look, India's defense posture has been since independence and will remain for the foreseeable future entirely defensive. Uh will India defend every inch of what it perceives to be and I say perceived to be because these are disputed borders. Will it defend every inch of what it perceives to be uh its territory against China? Absolutely. There there's no doubt about it. Um will it join a US effort to contain China in the South China Sea? Never. It's not going to happen. Not a not a patrol boat, not not a search and rescue aircraft is going to go to the South
53:59 China Sea to help uh defend Taiwan or to contain China in in the South China Sea. uh it is purely concerned with its own defense with and I I repeat this no appetite whatsoever for territorial expansion or any kind of um overseas adventurism. Uh India had one expertise with overseas adventurism in Sri Lanka and that was uh its role as peacekeepers in the Sri Lankan civil war. They quickly found out that peacekeepers became targets and that was you know the end for India's and uh the prime minister at the time Rajie Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan uh or by Tamil freedom fighters connected to Sri Lanka they weren't actually uh Sri Lanka
54:47 but supported from Sri Lanka uh and that was it like that's as far as India's ever gone overseas and even then they were invited in by the Sri Lankan government to serve as peacekeepers for a truce that have been negotiated. Uh Indian troops don't go any further than that, right? A and so it's simply not in the cards. It just doesn't matter to talk about it because it's it's never going to happen, at least not in this century. Okay. So if that's the case though, Salvador, China must know this pretty well. I mean, they they're they're pretty confident that India can't be a bullwalk of Chinese containment because India is focused on maintaining India. It's not Yes. No, they're they're containing China in Nepal. There's strong Chinese influence in Nepal.
55:33 They're containing China in Bhutan. They're containing China in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, at least until recently, the recent change in government in Bangladesh. And they're subtly involved. No one knows exactly how much in Myanmar. That is there's a strong Indian diplomatic and defense presence in Myanmar. There there are no troops in Myanmar but I mean diplomatic attaches military attaches and being involved now again trying to counter Chinese influence in Myanmar and you know India's defense interests correspond almost exactly to the former borders of British India. uh those areas that were carved out of British India or had treaties with British India for their
56:19 you know of um that the British were in charge of foreign policy of these territories like Nepal and Bhutan uh India's interested in go beyond that virtually nothing okay well that leads me to the next question and that is India is part of the quadrilateral dialogue otherwise known as the quad alongside the US Japan and Australia but it's the only member not allied sanctions on Russia or hard containment on China. Can the Quad really function with India having one foot out the door? The big weak link in the Quad right now is to be frank probably Australia. Uh under Joe Biden, it was the United States. The, you know, Joe Biden's administration had really no interest in the Quad. It demoted the quad from being
57:05 a uh defenseoriented grouping to being one centered on I think the issues were climate change uh corona virus and uh south pacific islands I think were the three things and when they had a quad leader summit and issued their priorities uh India is generally supportive of the quad it's generally comfortable I think with Japan as and I would say India is probably more comfortable with Japan as a partner than with the United States or Australia. Uh the Quad's popular in India but it no it's not that important in India. It's just one more organization that India is a member of and and to contrast the Quad remember India is also a member of China and Russia's axis of evil. It's almost hard to call
57:52 it anything else. Uh the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and India became a member along with Pakistan. Uh you know China wanted Pakistan as a member. So Russia insisted that India become a member not because India wanted to be a member but because Russia didn't want China controlling the whole organization and so Russia brought in India. Um similarly with the bricks uh the BRICS is a China dominated organization and India is a member. uh but in all of these organizations India seeks to limit Chinese hijgemony that is India's in these organizations precisely because the other members view it as a counterweight to China and in the quad India performs almost the same sort of role in that as long as India's in the
58:38 quad well India will do defense cooperation I India's gone further with the quad than with the SEO or the bricks in that when there was a support of US administration under the first Trump administration. There were quad naval exercises uh in the Bay of Bengal and India you know will participate in in the Quad in a uh defense guys not only in a civil um that said you know certainly the Quad with India as a member is never going to become an alliance and that's very clear. Uh does quad still have a purpose without India as an ally? I I suspect yes, but it's a a limited purpose and it will hold back the organization. Well, it will hold
59:24 back the grouping from ever becoming an organization as such. I was just thinking out loud here, but the US and Australian policy makers who had these great dreams at some point that the Quad is going to turn into, you know, some grand military alliance of sorts, they're going to have their moment of disappointment if they if they're not already going through it right now. But you know when we talk about the quad and we look at the relationship which you've just raised um between Japan and India it is true to say that Japan and India have become thick and fast friends. Yeah. However I would argue that the high point has been passed. I think the high point was when Shinszo Abbe was prime minister of Japan and you know he was
1:00:10 linking up with India in a very rapid way and the Indians were welcome welcoming him with open arms but now that Japan is going through its own sort of internal political turmoil. Do you see that that relationship is starting to weaken? It really is based much more on civil cooperation and development cooperation than anything else. the you know India is building highspe speed rail using Japan Japanese technology as opposed to Chinese technology of course but it's also not using French or Spanish technology it's uh Japan's shinkansen technology being exported to India most of India's metro systems are either using or or looking at you know Japanese technology so there's been a lot of development assistance uh going it's
1:00:55 just one way from Japan to India uh people in India you know Japan's popular in India very little talked about. It's completely non-controversial. I doubt there will ever be any kind of very close alignment between Japan and India. Uh for India, Japan's simply an alternative, not only an alternative to China, but an alternative to the United States. It's a uh you know it's a place where India can get technology cooperation knowhow um without having to deal with uh you know with the inherent challenges of dealing with American politics and not just Japan France performs that role as well. So although India does not have a close relationship with the European Union as such, it has a very close and long-standing relationship with France
1:01:41 here more based on defense technology but also um civil nuclear technology and you know other French technologies. Okay, Selv to a final question. If India is not a sidekick and it won't be an ally, what should the US relationship with India actually look like in the 2030s? India is a fellow democracy and really the world is going to be the world of the 2030s 2040s is going to be an axis between the great democracy of the developed world which is the United States and the great democracy of the developing world which is India. Uh as India's economy expands and I I really do believe that India's growth is baked in at least for the next 10 years that is this 6 to 7% growth is just a a
1:02:26 rebound. is very much like China grew very rapidly between 1980 and uh 2010 because it was just rebounding from a hundred years of repression of the economy. India is going through the same process of removing the lid on economic activity and the growth just happens. Uh India's growth like I said is pretty much baked in until India catches up with the middle inome countries of the world. by that point by the mid 2030s by 2040 India's economy will be as large as China's economy and at that point instead of being you know the poor country of Asia uh well right now we think of China as a potential global hegeimon with that kind of economic development India is going to be a
1:03:12 seriously attractive model for countries in Africa and throughout the poor regions of Asia as you know people wanting to do things the Indian way which will come with much fewer geopolitical strings attached than doing things the Chinese way. Uh, so I really think what we're looking at, everyone's always pessimistic. It's always, "Oh, it's the end of the world. The Chinese are taking over, the Russians are taking over, our economies are collapsing, all this all this angst when in fact what I see is a very positive future. I see a future where you know the US and the broader US Atlantic nexus is uh very prosperous uh while at the same time in the developing world India is becoming an additional pole of prosperity and a model for the developing countries of
1:04:00 the world. um that when you add those together, the West and India as two separate polls of support for democracy, freedom, human rights, human flourishing, human dignity, I think that tells a positive story for our future and I'm very much looking forward to living through it. Salvador, thank you for sharing your insights on the focus. Thank you. As the US faces a new Indo-Pacific reality, India stands at the crossroads of strategy, values, and power. Whether it's buying F-35s, reshaping Quad Dynamics, or pushing back against China while maintaining ties to Moscow, India isn't playing by the old rules, and that might be exactly why it matters. Thank you for joining me, John Brun, for today's episode with Salvatore
1:04:47 Babones. Check out the links in our show notes to learn more about Salvatore and connect with him on social media. Now on to questions for the audience. Should the US treat India as an equal partner even if it refuses to align fully with American strategic goals? How should the US respond if the IndiaPakistan arms race escalates due to China's influence? Can the US continue calling India the world's largest democracy despite Mod's controversial domestic record? Let us know in the comment section below. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's a free way to support us. You can also subscribe to the podcast on the Ocast network, iTunes, and Spotify, where we'd appreciate your five-star reviews. If you have comments or questions about the podcast, post them in the comments
1:05:34 section on YouTube, and I'll do my best to respond to as many as I can. My thanks as ever to the producer of the focus, Neil Smart. Please stay connected with us on social media. Follow me on X at bruny doctor and follow the focus on X at the focus sage. And don't forget Blue Sky on the focus podl.bs sky.social. From Adelaide, South Australia, you've been listening to the focus.
