I'm all right.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Eyes On geopolvis I'm here. What a very special one. Louis Rita, Jack Murphy Lewis of course past guest of Eyes On, past guest of the Teamhouse, So if you haven't checked out his Team House episode, it's a great one, one of my favorite ones in the last couple of years. Check it out there. Lewis, of course, was a former CIA officer, Chief of Station of New Delhi, so he's got a really interesting and interesting perspective of what's going on today
with Indian Pakistan. Last week, of course attacking Kashmir. I think twenty six people died and things are things are popping off all over, so temperatures are being risen everywhere. Lewis, thanks for joining us today. Really appreciate it.
Hey, my pleasure. I've taken time out for my campaigning to be Pope and came back here.
Hey.
Look, I've got thirteen votes lined up, so I pray for bad not bad.
Yeah.
I just finished watching that movie Conclave D that you recommend.
Yeah, what did you think? I liked it? It was good.
Yeah, Yeah, that's a good movie. I'm bringing back the Renaissance papacy.
Oh you're going hardcore. Huh hardcore army, start invading, start evading like.
The Ottoman Empire. Yeah, I'm starting small. Florence is first.
On the list.
Okay, build up some momentum. Yeah, So lewis, what the hell is going on in Indian Pakistan? It seems like Pakistan and India are both gearing up for a bit of a conflict, and when that happens, people seem to get pretty worried because they're both nuclear powers.
Yeah, it's you know, Uh, this this, this sort of tension and cross border activity flares every every few years or so.
Uh.
And I guess for the for the audience that just understand the obvious and and the really overt reason for this is the territorial dispute over Kashmir, most of which India occupies. Pakistan occupies a small strip, but India occupies the most.
Uh.
It's got a heavily Muslim population. So Pakistan claims that it's their own.
Uh.
But the problem I think lies in internal Pakistani politics.
Uh.
The Pakistani military has built up India to be a major threat and that justifies the size of the Pakistani army it justifies the money that a relatively poor country like Pakistan pours into the military. It justifies the military's political and economic power. And for them to sort of back away from pack from India as a threat, we'll raise a question on the part of the Pakistanis and why the hell do we have this military Let's let's let's back down. And now Pakistan is in pretty severe
economic straits. They're having trouble importing, paying bills. Things are going bad, and it tends to be a tried and true method to provoke a border tensions, uh low level conflict with India, to unite the Pakistani people behind the military and and and look at the India threat. And that's possibly one of the reasons why this is this is sparking. But the concern that most people have is that there is always a possibility of this escalating to
something more. India and Pakistan have had three wars, pretty sizable wars and pretty sizable border clashes without being an actual war.
And the concern now.
Is that India is faced with the situation that they feel they have to respond. Remember this is not an isolated incidence. This has been going on for I don't know, nine on fifty years or so, and Pakistan has had a I don't know, I wouldn't call it a tradition, but it has had a habit of using terrorist attacks as a policy tool. The fact that they allow these organizations to abide inside Pakistan and launch attacks, and the Indians have sufficient in their view evidence and intelligence that
Pakistanis are behind most of these attacks. Though you have to allow that every now and then some of these groups will exceed their authority, but they provide support and the stuff, and domestically, the Indian government feels it has to do something. I can't just let multiple people be killed and not take action. The question becomes what action are they going to take and what will they be satisfied with?
You know, it's interesting to see some of the responses in the Indian media, and I mean, of course some of it is rhetoric, but you also get the impression, much like America after nine to eleven or the Israelis after the recent October seven attack, very emotional views being represented in public.
Yeah, and and frankly that that's that's the danger when emotion takes over from logic. Indians are they're they're fed up, you know, there's been thousands of people killed in India over the years through terrorist attacks, Mumbai some time ago being one of the biggest ones. But it is constant. It is it is like a drip, and you know, some days it's it's two or three, some days it's ten or twelve. And so there is a significant amount
of motion involved in it. You know, in this case, Indians were mostly the ones killed, and Indians now expect some kind of action. In the past, the Indian government, the Indian people have been satisfied with Indian military strikes against terrorist training camps. They pretty much know where they are, they take them out. There's no direct action against Pakistani forces.
Sometimes the Pakistanis will respond with something moderate, you know, shelling across the line of control, or try to intercept Indian Indian jets and this sort of stuff, and then they step back and call it quits. The concern always is will they call it quits? Is that enough? If the emotions are running high and domestically, it becomes a problem for the government. Are they going to want to do more? Is it enough to hit terrorist camps or
do they hit Pakistani military? Do they indeed go after the water supply, because that's one of the big things that they suspended the water treaty. A significant amount of Pakistan's water flows out of India, and it's debatable whether the Indians can actually stop the flow of water, but they they can affect it. They can affect it through a whole bunch of different mechanisms. And the Pakistanis has said this is this is war. So how will they respond?
Will they respond with a military incursion into Cashmir or into parts of India? Nobody sure about that.
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Thank you.
I'm also reading that they shut down like that, they shut clearly shut down the border to India for Pakistani people, and also they cut off announced that we were suspending the Indus Waters treat Waters Treaty, a nineteen sixty agreement which of Pakistan's irrigated agriculture.
Yeah, that's what I was talking about. With the water treaty.
Again, India doesn't have the physical ability to shut it all down, but it does have the ability to impact the water flow, and that would come at a time when the dry season is coming and Pakistani ready faces economic problems and impacting negatively impacting the waterflow is going to be a disaster for them. There's a lot of
economic things. I just read an article today that airlines flying out of India have added four hours of flight time if they're going west because they're circumventing Pakistan, so they're flying down into the Indian Ocean and then going up the Persian Gulf, and it's adding time, et cetera. Because they're trying to avoid crossing Pakistani airspace, which is the shortest rude. There's a whole lot of economic impacts
that this is having. But unless India impacts the water, this is economic impact that both countries can absorb without much problem. I think the question is who, in this case, probably India, who wants to ratchet up the pressure. There's a red border skirmishing fighting across the line of control. They're shooting each other, which is not uncommon even in times of relative peace. Without any attack there's always a little skirmishing and firing across the border. The question becomes
does this blowout into something more? And the Indian plan, which the Indians have advertised over and over again, is this cold start where they do not require a military build up to take military action against Pakistan for years, they have developed this capability to launch from right now, immediately with the set number of divisions that are already prepositioned and can launch, So it wouldn't give the pakistanis
much warning or much time. And as everybody knows, the I think the elephant in the room, what's hanging behind them is the nuclear problem. Both countries are are nuclear states. Nobody's one hundred percent sure, but they probably range in sixty to one hundred nuclear weapons each side, mostly air delivered and missiles. And there is the significant problem, and there is where everybody should be concerned.
Let's get into that a little bit.
I mean, I think you did a good job outlining, you know, the the underlying conflict and where it comes from. You mentioned that it's already kind of like a in a sort of low boil because of these border skirmishes. How do you see this conflict potentially becoming a large scale conventional conflict, and then how would it make the jump from conventional to nuclear. How do you see that taking place if it does?
Hopefully not right?
Yeah, I mean it's one of multiple scenarios and both sides. I don't think either of them wants a major conflict or a nuclear war. It's not good for anybody, But a lot depends on on reaction and emotion. Best case scenarios, like they've done in the past, a few strikes on terrorist training camps, both sides flex a little bit of
muscle and they all back away and feel good. Worst case scenario is an Indian strike intentionally or by accident against Pakistani military facilities, personnels or whatever, and the Pakistanis
feel they have to respond. At that stage, if you've got a full blown war one side or the other, if they start to feel they are losing, and in this case, I would look at Pakistan as being the one who feels losing because you know, there's not a lot of physical strategic depth to Pakistan as compared to India, and an Indian incursion could pretty much go in into, you know, pretty deep. Did the Pakistanis field threatened and
then they allow the launch of nuclear weapons. India will have to retaliate, of course, and that on one scale is a disaster for the subcontinent. You're talking assuming a say a twenty five percent use, use of twenty five percent of their nuclear warheads, You're talking twenty thirty million dead initially on both sides. Because you know, we're talking heavily populated countries, very congest I mean, New Deli is over twenty five million people, and that's well within striking
distance of Pakistan's abilities. So you're gonna have a lot of dead. But what a lot of people are concerned about, and what Americans should be concerned about, is the modeling that's been done in various places on what would happen with say a nuclear exchange using twenty five percent of
each side's warheads. Radiation is a significant byproduct of a nuclear exchange, and it's going to form in the atmosphere, and depending on the time of year, the season, and the wind pattern, there is a significant better than fifty percent chance that that nuclear cloud, that contamination is going to be whisked across the Pacific, and at that point it becomes a matter of wind pattern whether it goes on a southerly route through Australia into Central American and
swing back up into the southern US or across the Central Pacific, hitting Hawaii, California, and then moving into the
American heartland. Our food basically contaminating grain production, fruit and vegetable productions, and a nuclear cloud of that nature is going to lead into millions of Americans developing illnesses from radiation poisoning long term, not necessarily dying in days, but maybe depending on how bign exchange, how much of it is carried by the winds, but over time developing cancers
and things, and our food supply poisoned. So you know we're concerned about tariffs raising food prices, you imagine what happens when a significant part of the US food supply is contaminated with radiation. And that has always been in the back of the US government's mind. If an Indian Pakistani war turned nuclear, and that's why you see many times American diplomats shuttling back and forth trying to calm
both sides down and push towards some kind of measured response. Again, remember they've done war, serious war three times at least now, with lots of casualties and a lot of shooting. And this was before they were nuclear powers. Now it's not so easy.
What steps is the US government taking State Department whatever to kind of ease tensions and kind of bring this back to you know, neutral.
That is a damn good question, and I don't have an answer. I don't know. In the past, we have seen senior State Department officers, National Security Council, you know, people in that Security Advisor and that sort of thing, flying out and doing shittle diplomacy between New Delhi and Islamabad and trying to negotiate a settlement. I don't get
a sense that this administration is doing that. I do get a sense that they've cut back on diplomatic activity, diplomatic representation, pulled back from a lot of what we used to view as our foreign national security interests. So I don't know what they're doing. Frankly, I would I would feel a little bit more comfortable if we can see it. And you know, part of this negotiation has to be done in the open, because you've got to allay people's fears and say look, we're on this, we're
working this. You have to put political international pressure on both sides. And if we're not doing that, if we're not out there, I don't know how much this is this is going to have an impact. The US used to be viewed as a fairly honest, neutral broker. We were a little less so neutral when we're doing that whole g WAT global war and terror because we were coosing up to the Pakistani because we needed them to
support operations in Afghanistan. And you know, the Indians always looked at that a skance and you know, you guys can't be trusted. But in general, we were viewed as we're sincere that we don't want this to happen, and we're gonna help both sides resolve the problem. I don't think we're there now. I don't think we're viewed as
a fairly neutral arbiter in this problem. I have images of somebody showing up in New Delhi and say, hey, we'll solve this problem for you for you know, three billion dollars if you buy this, we'll do this.
You know, very.
Transactional, which is is not going to work in this case. We have to we have to appeal to the logic, to the interests on both sides and get them to see that this is not going to be a good thing if they both went to war. So you know, my, my, my less than satisfying answer is I don't know, uh, and I am worried that we're not there.
Yeah, I mean you're not really seeing it in the press. Anything I've seen is like the US is urging restraint. It's like cool, no ship.
I mean, yeah, everybody's urging restraint.
Yeah.
Yeah, you got to do more than urge. You just can't sit there and say, oh, we want peace. You got to get your ass out there and work for it. And you've got to send people and you've got to convince them, and you may have to offer up some benny some benefits out there. And look, you know, well this trade deal will do this. You guys got to stop here. Here's what's going to happen. It's not happening.
You see the Chinese trying to but you know, China is not viewed as a helpful partner in India, and it is viewed as very heavily aligned with Pakistan, and it is right now. It's pretty much the US that could sort of straddle both sides, or used to be. I don't know what it's like, now.
I got a question whenever, like because you know, we cozied up to Pakistan during the GUOT and whenever we would hear about like the ISI doing like doing fuckery and working with the Taliban, and yes, with India be like I told you guys.
Oh yes, when I was there, I used to get slapped around all the time by like, what the hell are you guys doing? These people are supporting people who are killing your troops.
Uh.
And and you know you don't have a good response that at least that they will be happy with. You can kind of not say understand, But there are bigger geopolitical strategic issues we got to deal with, Like you know, if they cut off the roots into Afghanistan, we can't supply our people.
Uh.
But yeah, the Indians the time and time again were dumbfounded by how cozy we got with the Pakistanis, who they view, rightly or wrongly, as a personification of evil evil in the subcontinent.
Uh.
You know, but at the same time, the Indians were so cozy with the Russians that we viewed them very suspiciously.
Uh. So yeah, it's it's and I would argue that probably.
Still all our image is tainted by how close we were to Pakistan during the g WAT.
Yeah, the Indians sure don't trust us, the two sides.
I mean, the paranoia is also I sense a bit through the roof, like the conspiracy theories and like if something, you know, if it rains out that day, they're like, oh, well, the Pakistanis did that.
Yeah, you know, it's actually it's we're very much like that now too. Yeah, but yeah, there is you know, there are a lot of regions throughout the world where conspiracy theories override truth logic policy, and there is a there is a tendency for both sides to blame the other for a significant amount of evil that goes on in their countries.
You know.
It's it's like one of the big things remember during our involvement in Afghanistan is as we are trying to cozy with the Pakistanis and.
You know, because we needed.
Them for the support diplomatically, we were urging the Indians to get economically involved in Afghanistan to help rebuild the country. We didn't want to do it all by ourselves, and the Indians like, okay, we'll see, and they upped their presence in kabble and sent aid and stuff.
The Pakistanis hit the roof.
They went high paranoid and said, look, that's the Indians trying to surround us and get behind us. And what they're doing is building influence inside Afghanistan so that the next war they invade us from both sides. And they started taking, you know, all different kinds of actions against India, especially in Afghanistan because they thought here they come here, the Indians are going to try to overthrow us and do this kind of stuff. So it's one of those you know, if you do, damned if you don't.
Uh.
And it makes trying to bridge the gap between India and Pakistan very difficult because as soon as you come in with anything that looks like as part of a deal there's a slight benefit to the other side, they're starting to point the finger.
Aha, you're working them.
You're in cahoots with these guys, and you're gonna try to overthrow our governments. You're like, oh shit, no, we're just trying to prevent nuclear holocaust.
So yeah, paranoia is it. It goes.
It's it doesn't take much to get them over the top. It doesn't even take putting the match to the to the fuse, so you can do strike the match and they're gone. It's that's there. There, it is there, it is that's what you're gonna do.
Wow.
Uh, LuSE can you give us like an inside of what it looks like, obviously without giving classified information away, what it looks like as out of station or being the station chief in New Delhi and something like this is like brewing and about to pop off, Like what does a day look like for a station chief or even like you know somebody in the embassy who's a you know, State Department.
It's it's a good question.
Uh and and you know, it's one of the things I loved about the job When you say, what does a day look like? I don't know, because every day is different and every day can can you know, starts out quiet turns into a ship storm by one o'clock. Right now, you've got the embassy and everybody, not just the the the station, but the State Department, the Defense, out of Chai's office, the middle group, everybody going out to their contacts and trying to get a sense of
what's happening. What how does India field not, what's in the press, whatever, but what do the upper echelons of their national security apparatus feel about this thing? Think about this thing ideally? What are the options on the table? Are you going to escalate? How high are you going
to escalate? So you've got an embassy that's got everybody running around, on top of which you've got the Indian ib the Intelligence Bureau, monitoring everything you do, and they're all over your ass, everybody and trying to find out you know, somebody's leaking information, somebody's doing got to stop it, you got, you know, and they're telling their people don't talk to the Americans. So you're coming up against walls, and you're trying to keep the policymakers in Washington informed
so they can make rational decisions. Hopefully, if they're going to get engaged, they're going to get engaged with an understanding and this is happening in Islamabah two and understanding of what each side is thinking, how.
They view this.
Are there points where they can de escalate and back down with their their honor, their dignity intact? What pressures are they facing, because you know, India, being a democracy, is going to be faced with a lot of pressure. You've got your your own political party, people who are running for election, and it's it mirrors what we go through here.
A lot of your decisions.
Are made based on domestic policies and politics and staying in office. What are the economic sectors saying, because they're losing money? So how much pressure are you facing? What is the military saying? Because the military, I'm sure is rattling sabers and you know, we need to do something. We have been insulted. But from the Indian perspective, you know,
India's had some significant problems with their military. Not enough ammunition and equipment to sustain a long war and by that I mean more than two or three weeks, a lot of obsolete equipment. They've got some new stuff, some good stuff, but a lot of stuff that is that should have been retired decades ago. So it a lot of it is based on.
What can you do? I know what you want to do, but what are you abilities?
And you've got analysts back here at the CIA, at the State Department, at DD trying to figure out what can India do, what are they capabilities? You've got people in New Deli trying to figure out what are their intentions, which is probably more important than their capabilities. But you know, if an Indian response or a Pakistani response is going to be based on what they can do, maybe you
can moderate that response. You tell, look, you can't go beyond two or three weeks before it all starts to come undone, So why you even start and that sort of thing. So you've got people running around trying to meet contacts, sources, individuals and try to get a sense.
I don't know if Washington has sent out instructions to the embassy to get involved in media at this stage, but at least in pressuring or discussing with each government the benefits of not escalating, of responding in a measured way, because that would be the next step. You get your information, you figure out what's going on, what they want to do, and then you go out and say, okay, maybe it's not a good idea to escalate.
So it's it's.
Probably it's pretty busy. You're probably looking at at eighteen twenty hour days.
Yeah, fun fact there's no ambassador to India or Pakistan.
Yes, excellent, Yeah, just and it's exactly what you want to be when a nuclear war is looming. It's and again that's what that's you know, it gets back to the point I make that I don't get a sense that Washington is actively involved in trying to de escalate the situation. And if we're not involved, I don't hope. I don't have a lot of hope that anybody else who's going to try to get involved is going to have much success.
God, why do I never feel better about these conversations we have on eyes on geopology. Not just for you, you, Lewis.
I'm just generally, Oh, I like maybe making people uncomfortable and unhappy. It's it's one of my main charms. Uh yeah, because look, to be honest, the world is and I apologize to all the people all insult and everything, but.
The world's a piece of shit.
Uh.
It is a mess.
It is It is driven by human beings with all their flaws and greeds and and uh, the miscalculations that go on and that lead to disaster are pretty significant.
And then when you start looking at.
These things, it doesn't make you feel good. It you you if you ever watch the government in action, it's spends a significant amount of time behind the scenes putting out fires overseas, and it's it is.
It's like a fire brigade.
There's shit happening out there so often, so bad, so much, and you know, Americans don't know it, You don't realize that, you don't pay attention. But you've got a lot of diplomats out there banging on doors and trying to calm things down before it gets to the point that it's a problem for us. You know, people look at it and say, it's out there, it's.
Not on our shorestone.
There's a reason it's not here, and that's because you have people out there in uniform and civilian clothes on the front lines. Keeping it out there and stopping it from coming here. Doesn't succeed all the time, but it succeeds ninety percent of the time.
And if you don't have an active effort.
To keep things from going out of hand or being worse than they are. And don't don't get me wrong, it's not pretty out there. It's bad, But if you don't have an act of effort to keep it from getting worse, you don't know how it's going to end up in here.
Yikes, now that'll be okay.
Do you have any inkling of how you see this one? Turning out this particular Uh, you know, dust up. Do you think this is going to be.
Like the others?
Is it going to be like the other border clashes where there's some sort of a conventional conflict. And do you have any thoughts about, you know, what makes this one different or why it might turn out differently?
Oh that's good. Uh. And I'll tell you.
I'm I'm reticent to answer because I feel every time I give an answer, the opposite happens.
I Predicting the future is is pretty difficult. I mean we all we all get that part.
Yeah.
I look, I think I think there's a better than even chance that this will end up like it usually does. Ah.
You you're going to have the first week or two.
Uh. And again, you know, it's you can apply the US model to that. You know, we we we get upset about something, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, and then the next crisis comes and we forgot about that and we're onto something else. And in India is very much that way right now. Emotions are high. This is a terrible thing.
Uh. They are justifiably pissed off.
Uh. But I think and and I sort of there's a little bit of hope. Ah, take some comfort in that they haven't acted yet, and the fact that they haven't acted yet, because they could. You know, they can pretty much launch something relatively quickly. But the fact that they haven't acted yet is a sign that maybe they are giving everybody time to calm down, get get this
out of your system. They're evil, they're bad. Oh my god, We're gonna do something, and then when emotions are not as high as they are, they will respond, but maybe respond in a more measured way. You know, the Indian intelligence services have a fairly robust covert action capability in the subcontinent. Maybe they could do something to that effect. Where there is deniability, there is a response. Everybody winks, the Indian public is happy, and the Indian government denies it.
It could be enough, as I said before, some strikes on terrorists training camps, which allows for a limited Pakistani response which is acceptable to India, and then everybody goes back to negotiations. The thing is that that always happens, not always, but majority times. It happens when the US is involved in negotiations, in creating that ridge between them and where the US can say okay, okay, okay, you
guys did this, They did that. Here's let's wiser heads prevail here and they go back and forth without somebody backing both sides up like that, there is a potential for it to escalate. Now right now, I think there's probably a sixty sixty percent chance that that's how it's
going to end up. An acceptable response from India and acceptable response from Pakistan and everybody goes their their merry way, and then we have another year or two of you know, not talking at the dinner table between each other and back to negotiations and et cetera, et cetera. But as you said, it's you know, predicting the future is hard, and we should never rule out miscalculation on either side.
We should never rule out a mistake. And there's you know, the way the past Pakistani system is structured, there's nothing to stop a core commander from saying, you know what, I'm pissed off.
Who do these.
Indians think they are and taking it up a notch, And at that point the Indian's gonna say, well, you know what, we got to respond, and then things start to get out of hand. Cargill in ninety nine was an example of that. We got a little bit out of hand, and it could have gotten worse. And I think the US should be ready in cases starts to get out of hand, to step in and say, Okay.
This is a somewhat unrelated question. But as we're talking, it brings up something that you know, I've just been interested in about the relationship between the United States military and the Indian military. And you know, I've talked to a guy who's a Special Forces dude, and maybe this is going back more than a decade. Probably at this point, they did a j set and in India and like the Indians wouldn't.
Let them leave the barracks.
Like that's how constrained and how paranoid they kind of were about it.
But now you.
See UH press release reports where it seems like the United States and India does pretty normal routine military training exercises together. Special forces are conventional in India itself. I was just wondering if you had any thoughts about kind of how that relationship plays out against India's you know, historic non alignment policy.
Mm hmm, Yeah, that's that's that's a good point. The relationship between the US.
Overall UH and and it includes the military and India is horrendously complicated. Uh and it is it is bipolar. Uh you know, Yeah, India's had a history of non alignment, but that non alignment has somehow always been aligned with Russia. Uh and and India hates to be into any kind of alliance. And this is one of the things I think we're never going to get to the point within you that we want to get to, like say in the past, where we were with NATO countries, with certain
countries the Middle East. No, it's they don't want that. They the Indians and elements within the Indian government are either very anti American, having been raised during the Nine Aligned movement pro Russia, pro Soviet Union time, or very suspicious of American intentions. Part of it is our close relationship with Pakistan at one time. Part of it is, you know, they see what we do and what we want and it's not what they want.
So they're very suspicious.
They are concer tarned with you know, US influence and that and I don't mean, you know, necessary political influence, but you know, hell, you send out three hundred guys to do joint training with with the Indians and then you let them out in the evening and the afternoon said, you know, it's American culture. Is is addictive.
Uh.
You know the average American soldiers, you know guys I would even say, to some extent naive. But they're very open, very friendly, They're very welcoming. And the Indian looking and say, hey, these guys aren't bad. I kind of like these people.
Uh.
And and for the Indians that's like, oh that's not a good thing. You got to stay with your Indian nests and not trust the Americans because the Americans want something and we do.
Everybody wants something.
Uh, So we're gonna We're gonna see I mean, the Indians have seen the American military machine in action. They have made the conscious decision to say, that's where it is. That's what we need because nobody else's system works. American system works wonderfully, even with the whole of things that happen,
it works wonderfully. We need that system. How do we get that without landing in the American camp because we don't, you know, we want India as a counter to China, and India's like, well, we don't necessarily want to be the same counter to China as you want us to be we want to go our own way, but how do we get your thing without having to be part
of your alliance? So you're gonna see a lot of that interest in Uh, there's a lot of interest in American tactics, American logistics, American operations.
Uh.
And they want that. They know they can't get that from just reading books. They need to work with the US and they need to work with American troops. But at the same time, man, the paranoid runs so high.
Uh.
The the Indian security system looks at every American soldier, it's like, Okay, who's an intelligence officer who wants to recruit our guys? And they're like, no, that's not where it is. But you can't convince him of that. So it's it's it's it's bumping heads. I want this and I don't want you. And but for the US it's a it's a package deal. You get this, but you get US.
Does the Indian intelligence oparat like service look at Russia the same way.
New not even close. Uh. The the Indians have.
I won't call it a list, but that's probably the easiest way to describe it. A list of national security threats as you can imagine number one is Pakistan, you know who Number.
Two is United States really not China. Nine is three?
Why though, because we present the biggest counterintelligence threat.
To them in their view.
Ah And and it's and this is what I'm talking about counterintelligence threats. Uh. The security apparatus looks at you know, Pakistan obviously it's it's for obvious reasons.
But the US, all the US is there.
You guys are insidious, You're trying to spy on us, You're trying to steal our secrets. And you kind of tell them, you know who is the Russians are that it doesn't think that You've got You've got generations of Indian security officers who have had training in Russia, have had Russians come.
And train them.
Uh, They've had relatively good relations with them. So it's harder for them to view Russia as a big threat as opposed to the US.
Uh.
And you know, and it's it's you see that with with western allies of the United States, Uh, We're not high on their list is a threat because we've had decades of relations and sharing information that kind of stuff, joint training in these sort of things. And that's how India have used Russia the way Europe views the United States.
Wow, do you think that's sort of a generational thing, Lewis? Because I'm a little just a little interested in this topic, you know, like some people have said that, you know, sometimes the former British colonies are more British than the British themselves are today. And I don't think anyone would say that about India. Maybe New Zealand, but anyway, friends of mine from India have told me, like the younger generation sees themselves like as more Western than we here
in the West. Do like that, like total acceptance of that culture to the point of like kind of ridiculousness with consumption, consumerism, et cetera. Do you think that's like a generational thing tilting more towards Russia versus the United States?
Most definitely. And and that's an excellent point because you have you have the older generation who are still in charge, still in power, who grew up under then on line movement, who grew up under a socialist system, and who have those views toward Russia and toward the US. The younger generation that's coming up now is extremely interesting. This is the first generation and This is gonna sound funny, but it's the first generation that's had credit cards.
Yeah.
Uh and and are now sucking up dead like nobody's business. Uh it is. It is an informational generation.
Uh.
They are on you know, everybody is, but they are heavily into social media on the internet.
Uh, and are.
Seeing culture outside the non traditional culture.
Uh.
There are is a generation where a lot of them have been to the US and Europe for work. Many of them have come back, many of them gone. You know, I had when I was in India, I had I had my in laws at the time. They needed to get a medical checkup. So it took them to a hospital and it was It was interesting. The hospital looked like a resort in the Caribbean. The building itself, it looked like something from what they that Atlantis group or whatever they put out all these things and you walk
in and it was it was high end. Oh, my god, was at high end. At that time, India had two of the world's ten best microsurgery hospitals in the world. The hospital we went into was started by an Indian doctor who had practiced in the US for twenty years and come back and start to this hospital to give back to the Indian people, and you see a lot of that. And these people who have spent decades out in the West come back, and they come back very western.
They're still Indian, and they still have a lot of the Indian culture and everything ingrained in them, but they've also added on another strata of Western culture. And this new generation is much more accepting of the West. They view them so, I mean, look, you look at the IT industry in America. It's sixty percent Indian, seventy percent Indian. And they go back and forth, and their families come back and forth, and this is one of the things why, you know, it kind of pisses me off about in
part about the immigration thing. Dudes, this is the greatest American empire building you can have, where people come in here, get Americanized and go back home and America and their countries all willingly no coercion.
They come. Hey, man, America's great.
When I was in in Latin America, the US embassy everywhere I've been to was always battling to get rid of pirrating because everybody was pirrating US cable television. They used to say, that's.
A stupid idea.
These people are sucking down American programming, American commercials, American shows all the time.
You know what that does. Americanize them and.
They like American and they like the West, and they like this in American culture for want of a better word. You're subverting them. You're making them part of the American empire. And you cut that off, and you cut that off in total. So yeah, you have a generation of Indians who and this troubles the older generation who are very Americanized. And you see it as an example, the Indian civil Service has been until recently, the most prestigious.
Job you can get in India. I mean it's hard.
You got to go through the Indian Civil Service College. It's like four years of training. Uh and you know it comes with a lot of perks, a lot of benefits, a lot of stuff and you climb up. But that was seen as this is the premiere, this is where you want to go. That's flipped and now it's business. It's it, it's call centers, it's all this thing that's
what's become prestigious the Indians. The Indian Security Services used to complain to me that they cannot hire people because they're competing with people who work in, you know, with the IT industry. And I don't know what the actual numbers, so I'm just going to throw out a number. But an Indian civil servant is making five hundred dollars a month. They get they get housing, they get a car and a driver. The guy in it is making two thousand a month. It says, how can we compete?
Uh?
And they were, they were always shorthanded because they couldn't They couldn't do that. So now you've got you've got a younger generation that is reaching out, doing business with the West, living with the West, traveling out there more often. They're changing and they're coming up and they're butting up against the older.
Generation saying whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
No, this is not what we understand and how we grew up and this is what we don't think. So it's I think you've got probably another ten years before that old generation is enough of it is gone that the new people coming up are going to have a significant impact on attitudes.
That's interesting.
Yeah, we're talking a country of what one point three billion people.
Now, hopefully there's no nuclear war between then this now and ten years from now.
Oh, I'm not a betting man, but I would.
Not make that wager that there would be or wouldn't be there.
Look, someone someone's gonna fuck up.
I have I have undying confidence in the human race fucking up. It's just it's yeah, Look, twenty eight years dealing with people professionally, someone's gonna fuck up.
It's a bit scary that they do command. They give command and control over to like uh generals. Yeah, the Indians of nuclear weapons a right packast.
Yeah, I agree, it's it's you know, one of the things that the US had looked at, and I don't know if it's ever gone anywhere, is is to sit down and work with the Indians and maybe the Pakistan's on on developing a sound command.
And control of nuclear weapons.
Uh.
You know, look, they facto they have nuclear weapons. Uh, we're not gonna They're not gonna get rid of them. We're not gonna them get rid of it. The best thing to do is give them, help them with a system that gives them some positive control that this does not get out of hand. I don't know if that's ever gone beyond the drawing board or just discussions, but that would be extremely helpful to give both sides the ability of civilian leadership control of nuclear weapons and not
because you know, the military is a terrible thing. In both these countries, the military tends to be the organization that can get shit done. But you know, it's the old saying when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail and everything looks like a conflict, Well that's just another great, wonderful weapon that will help
us win the conflict. Where civilians who are not the brightest crayons in the box but have a lot of other shit they got to worry about, like, well, you know, I got to get re elected, so I got to keep the people happy. That people aren't gonna be happy if they get blown to smithther reens. So maybe I don't want to have a nuclear exchange. Will in the
end decide yeah, this is not a good idea. So a positive command and control of nuclear weapons decision making is probably a good thing, And if anything, the US should invest in that effort in both India and Pakistan to say you don't want this stuff lying around.
Lewis, this is always a pleasure, Jack, You got anything else?
No, I don't think so I mean, that's a pretty good, you know, thumbnail sketch for a very complicated topic.
I really appreciate your insights, my pleasure.
We got to get you back on the Team House as well one of these days too, might as well like crack into stuff. I'm sure there's things we missed too during your career. I'd love to hit up literally one of my favorite episodes in last couple of years. Guys, do us a favor. Check out Jack's new book, We Defy Secret History of Special Forces out now.
It is. It is a very good book, very good. Yeah, yeah, I read it's good.
Oh, thank you Lewis. Where can people find you? I'll throw some links down in the description for you.
Don't.
I don't want people to find me. Okay, yeah, I'm hiding out. I am leading a contemplative, peaceful life. If people need to get a hold of me, they get a hold of me through you.
All right, you need something from Lewis, hit me up and guys. Best way to support the show is Patreon dot com. Slash the Teamhouse. You get the Teamhouse ad free, you get Eyes on Geopolitics AD free, and early access to you get a few days before ten bucks you get for ten dollars, you can get a patch as well, including all that stuff. So help support the show. Paid trenon dot com, slash the team House. All links will be in the description. Thanks guys, this is awesome.