The India-China Border Conflict… and what America Will Make of It.

let's start at the deep end the whole
world all of a sudden is anti-china and the whole world is not disclosing to you what the reasons for that might be do you really think that people like donald trump and angela merkel all of a sudden hate china because of the treatment of muslims in xinjiang that just doesn't seem terribly probable do you really think that it's because people like donald trump and angela merkel are horrified by the change in banking conditions in hong kong is this is this really what has brought about this sudden change in attitude among major western powers notably the united states and its allies towards china why is it that the west has suddenly shifted from an overall tone of economic cooperation and development and appeasement towards china towards this hard line of confrontation well the first thing to note is that it is not so sudden a change this was the transformation in u.s policy and you might say western american pro-american policy this was the change in u.s foreign policy that obama attempted and failed to bring about with his so-called pivot to asia now probably the last person on earth to admit to you that donald trump's policy is imitating or following in the footsteps of the earlier policy of obama would be donald trump himself i'm sure he does not see it that way i'm sure he sees his own policy towards china something he has innovated however if you were to look at the larger community of foreign policy professionals uh pentagon employees there will be many people who more or less continuously worked under the obama administration and were part of obama's so-called pivot to asia and then drifted into the trump era with that awareness with that agenda in mind one way or another those people also would have heard years and years of anti-china rhetoric from donald trump including very strong anti-china rhetoric for him from him in his earlier attempts to run for president united states some of you may have forgotten this or if you're not american you might not have followed those earlier elections but this is not the first time donald trump announced his candidacy for president states in all of the earlier instances he canceled at some very early stage of the primaries but nevertheless he gave interviews and he became famous for constantly harping on constantly repeating anti-china rhetoric so there would have been an expectation amongst the people who were continuously under obama and then under trump that trump might continue obama's pivot to asia you know this so-called pivot that basically meant obama didn't want to deal with iraq anymore and didn't want to deal with afghanistan he wanted to deal with china japan korea with that part of east asia a pivot to the east you might say and obama failed to do that for various reasons probably most importantly being that he just failed to extricate himself from the quagmire in iraq if anything obama ended up getting deeper and deeper into that quagmire precisely because of the then unexpected meteoric rise of isis a threat that didn't last so long but at the time it wasn't clear at all how long or how menacing the threat from isis might really be okay so this is one thing it is possible that the united states and its allies were for many years getting their ducks in a row were getting organized to switch to a hard anti-china policy and thus at this moment they have a plausible excuse for this new anti-china policy in attaching it to their outrage over the treatment of muslims in xinjiang attaching it to their outrage over um i don't know constitutional changes in hong kong shall we say uh and now all of a sudden they can pretend to be outraged by the border conflict between india and china in ladakh there are many many misconceptions about this border conflict most of them have arisen i believe spontaneously not as the result of any kind of cia orchestrated misinformation campaign campaign or anything of that sort oh and in this video i'm not going to discuss it too much but there's also the the ongoing south china sea controversy this is not being discussed so much right now but uh in general the philippines had a period of many years of trying to cooperate with china try to play nice with china trying to work with china instead of against china and they have finally lost patience with that so in general um the cautious optimism of recent years that the conflict between china and basically all of the countries of southeast asia over the south china sea territorialization and island dispute and so on and so forth the cautious optimism that would resolve itself without any further conflict is now dead and gone so increasingly countries including the philippines indonesia malaysia and australia are hardening into an anti-china stance we actually we don't know yet really what japan's position will and this will be it is also true that going back to that earlier obama period of the pivot to asia so for you know a fair number of years now there has been an overt strategic alliance between australia and india and it has been completely overt that this alliance was anti-china the extent to which japan would be the third member in that alliance has been debated and you might well say that alliance hasn't accomplished anything great so far but there was a palpable example in india australia and japan all trying to contest the control of the coast of myanmar including ports and mirrors there's naval policy across a huge span of the ocean and showing that they were not comfortable with china having too much real estate too much control over that coastline so these are kind of warm-ups for a strategy on a grand scale of uniting again at a minimum australia and india against china and what role japan the philippines even vietnam might play in joining in this alliance remains to be seen just in the last week australia announced a 40 increase in its military budget uh and that's over a 10-year period so decade to decade comparison enormous increase in the military budget and in plain english it is for anti-china reasons they want to have a credible deterrent if they have to deal with war with china so that's going to be partly naval preparedness because australia it doesn't have a land border with china it's also going to mean long-range missiles so yeah conflict is heating up what does this have to do with the border between india and china and ladakh i've already shown my cards here i think it's quite insincere attaching this sudden policy shift in the part of the united states australia numerous other players the anti-china shift in the overall international diplomatic climate should always say i do not think it is the result of the border conflict in ladakh um however that is a convenient way to illustrate to the general public why these various anti-china powers now want to [Music] take the position they are taking against china it gives them an opportunity to depict china as a rapacious expansionist imperialist power which it is not so china is many things there are many bad things i can say about china it is a communist dictatorship it's a country that lacks democracy it's country the last trade of speech if you think china is trying to conquer india if you think china is interested in any way in expanding its territory into india you must be joking china does not want to conquer india china does not want to conquer myanmar it doesn't want to conquer laos there is absolutely no interest from the current regime in expanding china's borders in any direction whatsoever not even in reconquering areas that historically were part of china in the past but are not currently under chinese control so they do not even have an eurodentist policy which is a big contrast to major empires around the world and indeed this is actually one of the defining elements of chinese foreign policy now there is a disputed territory on the border between india and china there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that china aggressively planned to invade the disputed territory there is no evidence that there was any organization that there was any forethought whatsoever there was any intention behind this clash that erupted on the border and there is especially this important there's no evidence that the chinese won the body count on the indian side was published first and many people just imagined that the number of dead and injured soldiers on the indian side was absolute and the number of dead and injured soldiers on the chinese side was zero or close to zero and then later we found out that's not true at all china has not confirmed their body count but um there were some secret communications intercepted basically of people making like radio calls calling for ambulances and dealing with the casualties and it turns out that far more people died and were injured on the chinese side than on the indian side now that doesn't mean that either side had planned an invasion or that there was any planning for this situation whatsoever most accounts seem to say that this was something like two groups of teenagers getting into a rumble that this is something that happened in an unplanned messy way uh where neither government at the elite level like at the level of presidents and prime ministers nobody ordered this nobody had a grand strategy nobody had an objective so that's very important to keep in mind there's also a sort of spontaneous narrative that's emerged from the public perceiving this i was saying spontaneous because i don't think anyone orchestrated this i don't think this is an intentionally deceptive narrative that's been presented to the public or by the public people have presumed that china is in a position of unchallenged power and this is not true uh let's very briefly talk about the advantages each side has here india has the greatest advantage of all have you ever heard that old saying possession is half the law india possesses this territory india inhabits this territory if you just zoom in on google maps you're going to see that in the indian controlled portion of the disputed territory there are towns and villages and farms and shops and roads and electricity and bank machines atms where there are bank machines there is civilization there is normal life if you go to youtube and you put in the names of these small towns in the disputed territory you will see tourists tourists going up to hike in the mountains and ride their bicycles it doesn't look like a war zone it doesn't look like a disputed uh territory india has achieved normal life coated in existence in this disputed or occupied territory whatever you want to say that is a huge fundamental victory and i don't know to what extent that was an intentional strategy that the indian government pursued that they wanted to cement their position there by making sure they built those roads and developed those villages and irrigated the land to have agriculture i don't know or maybe that's just the way it worked out maybe just ecologically the grass grew greener on that side of the hill more rainfall better soil or something ultimately roads don't grow because the soil is good the government had to build those roads and the other infrastructure electricity and internet connections and getting bank machines and running there but india has successfully cultivated the land in every sense of the word on their side of the line of control on the chinese side of the line of control you will find absolutely nothing of the kind you will find dust and a rock it is an inhospitable wasteland to what extent that's the result of climate alone i can't say i'm not a geologist and i'm not a meteorologist but to some extent that is either the result of policy on china's side or a failure of policy a lack of policy that maybe china didn't make this effort to build roads and networks and start inhabiting and peopling and settling the land there right and again if you just zoom in on google maps you can see this now also if you search youtube you're not going to find happy tourists going on hikes there the way the chinese treat that area is that it's a very dicey military occupied area where nobody is allowed to freely walk around or do anything they have military patrols they have these soldiers staying in tents at a series of checkpoints so that's that's the way the chinese have played the game and their side of the disputed territory so who is winning if you just take some time to explore zooming in and zooming out on google maps you can search for things like bank machines those signs of normal life there is a profound sense in which india is winning you could say india has already won now with that even said when you talk about what's likely to happen next india has no reason to change the status quo because from their perspective in this sense they've already won they've already occupied and populated the land that they want to have and that's it they don't need to fight for anything more from the chinese side the advantage of perpetuating the status quo and this is most likely why they haven't invaded if they haven't tried to sell this to negotiations or they haven't offered a purchase or sale they haven't offered an adjustment to the border resolution the border from the chinese side it was plausible that one day sooner or later there would be a free trade agreement between india and china or maybe even an agreement about train train lines or cooperation there'd be some treaty some kind of negotiation with governments where the chinese could add on the proviso oh yeah and we want you to give us back this disputed territory we want you to agree that the border is where china says it is and this will become permanently transgender now why is that so plausible because china has done that with so many other countries all around the world china gives development aid to poorer countries and then they tack on certain provisos requirements conditions that they ask for in return this is not unique to the government of china if you get interested in development economics of course even countries like canada and countries like england play this sort of game in the case of england or canada they're not asking for territory in return but yes concessions of various kinds treaties of various kinds in return for economic development cooperation and so on and so forth so it is quite likely the chinese side thought that if they just sat back and did nothing sooner or later there would be a large deal made with india for some other reason under some other heading whether it was connecting a speed train or what have you and at that point it could be settled and china would regain the disputed territories without firing a shot let's also say from the perspective of india it's quite likely that wouldn't be a bad deal if there's some multi-billion dollar agreement that's really going to benefit india in a lot of ways and they say well we're going to lose maybe five or six villages in this remote area that not much of anyone cares about and we'll finally have peace with china we'll have a border checkpoint that makes sense and we can write it into this chapter of history it's quite likely india under the right circumstances would be happy with that also there is another interpretation of this um another interpretation that's possible and this i'll give you another example of this happening in real world political science it is possible that china intentionally wanted to keep this border unresolved so that they had caused this bellai so that they had a pretext to go to war so that a pretext to start a conflict between india and china at any time one of the examples i've studied most in modern history of this is actually the border between thailand and laos despite the involvement of the united nations despite the involvement of independent observers and sending in geologists and cartographers and satellite data experts there have been so many internationally adjudicated efforts to settle the question of where exactly the border is between thailand and laos the thai military and the thai government will absolutely never agree on where a certain portion of the border is and it's in an area that's almost completely uninhabited there's a little length of the border in the middle of the mountains where thailand refuses to sign anything and that is so that they can again because they've done it in the past so they can again start a war with laos they can again invade or even conquer laos they have caused a spell out that there is this unresolved border on the map so every map will have a little dotted line area or a special pink line where that's the unrecognized portion of the border again in an area that nobody cares about except it has this enduring status it's like having a box of matches in the drawer of your kitchen just in case you want to start a fire sometime um the average person doesn't know about and doesn't care about this disputed border however still in thailand the average person has memories of the war last were 1987 88 89 in that period thailand invaded laos and the united nations found thailand at fault for that that morally and ethically thailand was at fault and thailand had to pay reparations they had to pay a penalty allows to apologize afterwards because it was a one-sided illegal act of aggression under international law so that would be a much more grim interpretation of the ladakh border dispute between india and china the fact that the chinese government can lie to you doesn't mean that they are lying to you and government of china took its time before making official statements about what happened and why it matters on the china india border but now that those official statements are out they sound a lot like the truth to me and the most fundamental thing they're saying is this wasn't a planned invasion china has no plans and no intentions to conquer india china has no plans to expand its territory this was a kerfuffle in plain english this was an unfortunate confusion that resulted in a bunch of people beating each other with sticks again no no shots were fired no guns were used this was a conflict that started apparently because of confusion over the placement of a tent along a certain patrol line where the chinese do regularly come up and check on one of the roads that's on the the indian side of the line of control so what is the ultimate moral of the story here well for one thing in politics when problems don't get solved very often it is because one side or the other does not want a solution when wars go on for decades and decades it's you know they're never resolved on paper very often it's because one side or the other feels that they have already won and they only stand to lose if there's either an outright conflict or an outright treaty negotiation another example of this still disputed to this day is the border between russia and japan have you heard of that one did you even know that russia has a border with japan look up sakalin island it may well by the way both on paper and in practice russia and japan remain at war to this day they never had a peace treaty at the end of world war ii they have never sorted out where their border is and every month week after week they have fighter jets back and forth dog fighting over that border i'm not joking in any given year you can look up the statistic for how many times it happened if it happened 300 times in a year or 150 times a year but they have more or less constant dog fighting over that disputed border i'm assuming the russians do it because they think their pilots need the training you know nobody gets killed or maybe i'm lying maybe once in a long while there's an accident and one of these plans goes down or something because that's a dangerous game right but there is a there so there is a war zone that seemingly nobody cares about why russia doesn't think it's in their interest to resolve it peacefully or violently japan at least currently they have no army they have no ability to make war they have no negotiating position so it's not in their interest to resolve it so it remains unresolved the war and the border dispute goes on forever and ever and that's basically what we're talking about with the border between china and india ladakh china has by the way resolved its borders with many other countries including myanmar they sat down with the government myanmar they said okay this is where the border is um it's kind of inconvenient in a few places because of the mountains and the rivers let's agree to trade some land we'll give you a little bit of land here you give us a little bit of land there no problem there have actually been many other countries and many other border disputes where china was completely reasonable everything got sorted out no problem and it's significant that so far ladakh is not one of them and by the way as mentioned the south china sea the conflict with the philippines also not one of them um and then on a grand scale we have the question of this shift in american policy and australian policy and in the america allied world uh i would guess including england we'll see how far england is willing to go now in in adopting an anti-china policy as opposed to embracing a tree with china there has been this shift that started under obama not under trump of shifting america towards a harder and harder anti-china policy and the truth is as in 2020 nobody knows why nobody knows what the us government is trying to win nobody knows what the us government is afraid that they can lose i could speculate i could name all kinds of controversies that have come up in the press we could talk through hypotheticals but i'll tell you one thing whatever the reason is for this big fundamental shift in american foreign policy geostrategic roles and what have you it has absolutely nothing to do with india's border dispute with china