2493 - India-Pakistan's Dangerous Standoff Intensifies w/ Irfan Nooruddin

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode: 2493 - India-Pakistan's Dangerous Standoff Intensifies
Guest: Professor Irfan Nooruddin, Professor of Indian Politics at Georgetown University
Release Date: May 8, 2025
Host: Sam Seder

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1. Introduction

In Episode 2493 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Sam Seder delves into the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan with special guest Professor Irfan Nooruddin. The episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the historical and contemporary factors fueling this dangerous standoff, set against the backdrop of shifting U.S. trade policies and global geopolitical realignments.

2. U.S. Trade Policies and Trump's Trade Deal with the UK

Economic Impact of Tariffs

Sam Seder opens the discussion by addressing the detrimental effects of the current tariff policies under the Trump administration. He likens the situation to a snake swallowing a rat, emphasizing that the damage is irreversible and questioning the extent of economic repercussions.

Sam Seder [04:00]: "This is one of those things where it's like the snake has already swallowed the rat... If Donald Trump makes all sorts of tariff deals that slow things down or stop the tariffs by this weekend, then the rat still has to pass through the system."

Trump’s Trade Deal with the UK

The conversation shifts to President Trump's recent announcement of a trade deal with the United Kingdom, touted as a significant achievement despite the UK being the "11th biggest trading partner" of the U.S. Sam and co-host Matt Binder critically examine the deal's actual benefits, highlighting that the U.S. exports to the UK ($80 billion) slightly exceed imports ($68 billion), questioning the necessity and extent of the purported gains.

Sam Seder [06:01]: "Britain is the 11th biggest trading partner in the first quarter of this year... So we're not getting particularly ripped off by them in Donald Trump's parlance."

Economic Consequences and Future Projections

Seder discusses the imminent economic downturn caused by halted container shipments from China, predicting shortages, layoffs in trucking and retail industries, and potential stagflation as the Federal Reserve warns of inflation coupled with job losses and stagnating GDP growth.

Sam Seder [10:56]: "We're going to start to see empty shelves and lower sales, which means layoffs... We're going to see it from there."

3. India-Pakistan Conflict Analysis

Historical Context of the Kashmir Conflict

Professor Irfan Nooruddin provides a detailed historical overview of the India-Pakistan conflict, focusing on the disputed region of Kashmir. He explains that the partition of British India in 1947, which led to the creation of India and Pakistan, left Kashmir as a contested territory due to its majority Muslim population. This has been a perennial flashpoint, leading to three major wars and numerous skirmishes over the past 75 years.

Professor Irfan Nooruddin [24:19]: "Partition occurred in 1947... Kashmir became a flashpoint leading to all-out war on three occasions in the last 75 years."

Leadership Dynamics and Military Influence

Nooruddin contrasts the leadership in both countries, highlighting India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nationalist and right-wing stance against Pakistan's Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif and the influential role of the Pakistani military under General Munir. He emphasizes that Pakistan's military dominance and reliance on Chinese weaponry contribute significantly to the ongoing tensions.

Professor Irfan Nooruddin [27:16]: "Shabazz Sharif came back in as a compromise candidate... The Pakistani military, led by General Munir, is the true power making decisions."

Recent Escalation and Military Engagements

The discussion turns to the latest hostilities triggered by a militant attack in Kashmir on April 22, which resulted in the deaths of 26 Indian tourists. Nooruddin explains how this incident led to retaliatory strikes from both nations, including drone warfare penetrating deeper into each other's territories, thereby escalating the conflict to a potentially uncontrollable level.

Professor Irfan Nooruddin [31:58]: "We've stepped into the ladder of escalation... drone strikes that penetrate deeper into territories."

Geopolitical Implications and Global Influences

Nooruddin analyzes the broader geopolitical implications, noting the strategic alliances where China supports Pakistan with advanced weaponry, while India strengthens ties with the United States. He underscores China's vested interest in maintaining regional instability to keep India preoccupied, thereby limiting its focus on countering Chinese economic dominance.

Professor Irfan Nooruddin [45:17]: "China has a lot to gain from fomenting instability... India is a part of the strategic plan for countering China."

Potential Outcomes and International Intervention

The professor speculates on possible scenarios, suggesting that without strong diplomatic intervention from global powers, the conflict could spiral uncontrollably. He expresses concern over the lack of proactive U.S. diplomatic engagement due to administrative transitions, which leaves a vacuum in mediation efforts.

Professor Irfan Nooruddin [40:05]: "The U.S. does not have a permanent ambassador in either capital... There's a vacuum in diplomatic leadership."

4. Conclusion

In wrapping up the discussion, Sam Seder emphasizes the precariousness of the India-Pakistan relationship amid shifting global alliances and internal political dynamics. He hopes for increased diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions but remains cautious about the current trajectory.

Sam Seder [53:31]: "Irfan Nooruddin, Professor of Indian Politics at Georgetown University, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it."

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Notable Quotes

• Sam Seder [04:00]: "This is one of those things where it's like the snake has already swallowed the rat... If Donald Trump makes all sorts of tariff deals that slow things down or stop the tariffs by this weekend, then the rat still has to pass through the system."

• Professor Irfan Nooruddin [24:19]: "Partition occurred in 1947... Kashmir became a flashpoint leading to all-out war on three occasions in the last 75 years."

• Professor Irfan Nooruddin [31:58]: "We've stepped into the ladder of escalation... drone strikes that penetrate deeper into territories."

• Professor Irfan Nooruddin [45:17]: "China has a lot to gain from fomenting instability... India is a part of the strategic plan for countering China."

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Key Takeaways

1. Economic Strain from Tariffs: The episode highlights how U.S. tariff policies under Trump are causing significant economic disruptions, with potential long-term impacts on various industries and job markets.

2. India-Pakistan Tensions: Professor Nooruddin provides an in-depth analysis of the historical and current factors contributing to the India-Pakistan standoff, emphasizing the unresolved Kashmir conflict and its role as a constant source of tension.

3. Global Geopolitical Realignments: The shifting alliances, with India aligning more closely with the United States and Pakistan leaning on Chinese support, are exacerbating regional instability and complicating diplomatic efforts to resolve conflicts.

4. Potential for Escalation: The use of advanced weaponry and drone warfare increases the risk of further escalation, potentially drawing in nuclear capabilities and leading to broader regional or even global implications.

5. Need for Diplomatic Intervention: The lack of strong U.S. diplomatic presence and leadership in mediating the conflict underscores the need for proactive international efforts to prevent the situation from deteriorating further.

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This episode serves as a crucial examination of one of South Asia's most enduring and volatile conflicts, contextualized within the broader framework of global economic policies and geopolitical strategies. Professor Irfan Nooruddin's insights shed light on the complexities of the India-Pakistan relationship and the urgent need for diplomatic solutions to avert potential disasters.

Transcript

[Sam Cedar]

You are listening to a free version of Majority Report with Sam Steder. To support the show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to majority SM please.

[Emma Vigeland]

The majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Sam Cedar]

It is Thursday, May 8, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Efron Nooruddin, professor of Indian politics at Georgetown University, talk about the trading hostilities between India and Pakistan. Also on the program today, Trump finally, finally announces a trade deal with our oldest and not most relevant trading ally. The UK should be big if it.

[Matt Binder]

Actually was the Gilded Age.

[Sam Cedar]

This is big. Trump drops his surgeon general nominee. And another loss for Trump and nominates a wellness influencer as Israel continues to choke off all food and aid to Gaza as well as relentlessly bombing them. New report on what a boondoggle Joe Biden's so called humanitarian peer was. CBO analysis shows that the Republican Medicaid proposal will cause millions to lose their health insurance. And next up for their big beautiful bill, massive cuts to snap. That's food assistance. Democratic North Carolinian Supreme Court justice finally to be seated as her opponent finally concedes. Speaking of conceding, John Fetterman has a massive outburst at a union meeting causing his own staffers to cry. Or as Schumer says, he's a superstar. Speaking of Schumer, Schumer leading the Democrats to cave and provide a rubber stamp for Trump's crypto corruption. This as national parks are about to slash workers, so to the U.S. geological Survey. In fact, all across the Department of Interior, Trump and the Fed chair exchange blows. And two days in, still no pope. Lastly, NYPD arrests 80 at a pro Palestinian protest at Columbia. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us. Emma is out today and out tomorrow. I asked her not to come back in until there was one more game between the Knicks and the Celtics because I didn't want to deal with it. So there it is.

[Matt Binder]

Did you watch?

[Sam Cedar]

I don't have time to talk about this. We got a lot of stuff to get to today, Matt. We're very busy so don't have time for that. The president in a desperate attempt to salvage this disastrous tariff policies. And let's be clear, the the damage has been done. Right now we're just talking about to what extent the damage to the economy is going to be. This is one of those things where it's like the, the snake has already swallowed the rat, as it were. And we're just going to, it's just a question of like how long is it going to take to pass through the system. And if Donald Trump makes all sorts of tariff deals that slow things down or stop the tariffs by this weekend, then the rat still has to pass through the snake. It's just a, it's just not as long of a snake or whatever happens to a rat inside a snake will happen quicker. And if he doesn't, particularly in terms of China, then it's going to be, some people say disastrous, other people say catastrophic to the economy. The Fed warning yesterday, without saying the word stagflation was warning of stagflation, which is inflation and job loss and lack of GDP growth. You know, this is two forces that supposedly are inverse of each other lining up in a very, very bad way. But Donald Trump announced with Keir Starmer and I guess they were in the.

[Matt Binder]

Oval Office, but Keir was phone and.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, was that. He was.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, he was over the phone.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, I didn't realize. Okay, maybe the British ambassador was there or something.

[Matt Binder]

Yep.

[Sam Cedar]

They have signed a pact. Now, let's be clear, probably if not the oldest trade partner, maybe the second oldest.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

But it's the best deal we've ever done with anybody.

[Sam Cedar]

It's so great the UK Is now going to be able. And let's just be clear here, just so you get a sense of how much they were ripping us off. I want to keep that, keep that back up there. But Britain is the 11th biggest trading partner in the first quarter of this year, the 11th biggest. So not even top 10. The two nations have. Just to give you a sense of how much we're going to finally gain on this relatively balanced trade, US sent about $80 billion worth of things like gas and airplanes and machinery and other products to Britain in 2024 and bought about $68 billion worth of cars, pharmaceuticals and other goods. And so not necessarily like we're not getting, we're not getting particularly ripped off by them in Donald Trump's parlance.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

And.

[Sam Cedar]

There'S going to be some reciprocity in terms of beef, I guess now with us in Britain, although they will not take any type of hormone laden beef. So it's going to be all specialty beef, at least in the context of this country. They are taking tariffs on steel and aluminum will fall from 25% to zero. Unclear to me that we purchased that much aluminum and steel from Britain. But maybe this Means that other countries will send it through Britain. I don't know how much beef we're going to sell there when they've got, like, places like Ireland, but who knows? Keep that up for one more second, if you could. I guess we're going to get more. What's that car? The Land Rovers. There's going to be a. There's going to be. They're going to allow for a little more Land Rovers to get here.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, not just Land Rovers, Sam.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, oh, and Bentley and Rose. Roy, go back to.

[Matt Binder]

Sam, you want to play this?

[Sam Cedar]

Here we go.

[Matt Binder]

Let's play this clip of Tim talking about Rolls Royces here.

[Sam Cedar]

So this is, this is the big news that's going to save us. They, you know, made that deal and. But they, you know, we've had just a very special relationship with them. Like, I won't do that deal with cars. I mean, unless somebody shows me that there's another kind of a car that's comparable to a Rolls Royce and there aren't too many. This is a good commercial for Rolls Royce. Mr. President, I wonder whether you'd like to buy.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

I mean.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, the last time this happened, I would be happy to suggest a discount, obviously a very modest discount. I've had many of them, actually, you know, the last time that happened. Okay, I don't give a. About this, frankly. You should also know in terms of cars. So your Rolls Royces will be a little bit more available. Maybe. I don't know if the price is going to go down, but there's going to be a lot. There's going to be a little more availability and Range Rovers, however, there is going to be a 25% tax that's going to. Excuse me, a tariff that's going to be levied on car parts starting this Saturday.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

So.

[Sam Cedar]

For those of you not getting the Rolls Royces, I got some bad news for you. But here is Trump announcing, right? Is this the clip? This is Trump announcing it. And supposedly, and I just want to make clear, 50% of the content of cars assembled in America is imported. So 50% of the cost of cars, of manufacturing the cars are about to go up 25%. So I guess you could say we're going to see probably 12 and a half percent bump in the cost of car making just overnight. Here he is bragging about his meeting with China on Saturday. Supposedly, according to the Chinese, the US Begged them for a meeting.

[Matt Binder]

This isn't him bragging about the meeting. This is him talking about the ports.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, well, this is gonna be with the ports. But understand, this Saturday, or I should say this weekend, Bessant announced that there was going to be a meeting in Switzerland with China. And the Chinese are now saying they begged us for this meeting. Now, who knows? There's a lot of posturing, I'm sure, going into that meeting. And like I say, the other day I heard this rumor about Mother's Day being, you know, a day when Trump was going to cave for the sake of the mothers. But here he is with his ridiculous math about trade. Because business has slowed down, as you mentioned. We're seeing, but we're seeing as a result, the ports here in the US the traffic has really slowed and now thousands of dock workers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs. That means we lose less money. When I see that, that means we lose less money. Look, China, okay, there was some business entity, I can't remember the name of it now, that had basically, and maybe you've seen this online, a graph of, of the timing of everything. April two, Liberation Day tariffs, container departures from China start slowing. It's a 20 to 40 day container ship transit time. So by early May, mid May, container ships to US Ports come to a stop. And that's what we're seeing right now. It's starting right now. And by then, over the course of the next two weeks is there's going to be 35, 40% less containers coming into some of the biggest ports in the country. Then from that 1 to 2, 1 to 10 days, usually it takes by truck or transit to get to the cities. So in a normal situation, something that gets shipped around April2, right. Whatever it is, whatever goods gets to cities about 30, 45 days later, maybe a little bit more 50 days later. And that takes us to mid May, late May. And right now we are like just on the cusp of this and we're going to start to see empty shelves and lower sales, which means layoffs. And we're going to see that first in the trucking and then into the retail industries and then we're going to see it go from there. Now, could this be reversed? No, this is set in stone. But if everything was to change with China this weekend and things started going back up again, you would theoretically only have about a month and a half of this process. Now, do you recover that quickly? No, but maybe by the fall things would be okay. But that's what we're looking at now. And they're just going to keep trying to Trump, as it were, trumpet this trade deal with Britain where we had literally a, I don't know, 10, 12% deficit, maybe billions of dollars. And his whole concept of ripping off. If we have no goods coming into the country, we're not losing money. In the same way that if I don't go buy a coffee at the coffee store, I'm not losing money. Again, Donald Trump's mind, if I go buy a coffee, I'm losing money. Forget the fact that I'm getting the coffee, I'm losing money. Unless the coffee vendor buys a sea to rista membership to. Or I guess it would be a majority reporter. Man, I don't get that expensive of a coffee. But if he, if that person buys a majority reporter, a member and I buy one coffee a month, then I'm, I'm not, I'm not losing money. Yeah, I'm winning. It's such a, I don't know, like an arrested version of how this works.

[Matt Binder]

Well, the problem is we call him a businessman. It's great to have a business man in, but he's a businessman that doesn't produce anything. He's a rentier, he rents things. He's a landlord. He doesn't make things for export. So he doesn't. This is foreign to him.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm telling you. Ron Varno told me that this was the way to do it.

[Matt Binder]

All those Chinese truck drivers moving stuff around America.

[Sam Cedar]

In a moment, we're going to talk to Efron Narudin, professor of Indian politics at Georgetown University. First, a couple words from our sponsors. Oh, I should just also say a new pope just dropped. Don't know any details yet, but supposedly white smoke already. Yep, we will get to that in a moment, but first word from our sponsor. This product that I've been using for probably about a decade, 2025. Oh, easily 2015, probably even before then. Delete me. What does it do? It makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. When things like surveillance, things like data breaches, things like phishing, things like people want to know where you live and docs you. All that stuff makes everybody vulnerable to easier than ever to find personal information about people online. As you know, having your address, phone number, family members, names hanging out on the Internet can have actual consequences in the real world and makes everyone vulnerable. More and more online partisans, nefarious actors going to find this data. They're going to use it to target political rivals. They're going to use it to target civil servants. They're going to do it to target, I don't know, people who speak out on Social media. I want to thank Delete Me for sponsoring today's episode. With Delete Me, I protect both my personal privacy and the privacy of my business and my fam. It's great. It sends you a digest every month letting you know what they found, where they found it, what they've deleted. You can go in and make sure this, this stuff is erased. Keeps your phishing, you know, fake emails and, and texts to you. It keeps that down as well. And because these data brokers repopulate their sites, Delete Me continually does it, and keeps you protected. It's a great service. You can take control of your data, keep your private life private. By signing up for Delete me now at a special discount for you today. Get 20% off your delete Me plan by texting the word majority to 64,000. Only way to get 20% off text majority to 64,000. That's majority to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. Also sponsoring the program today. It's still time to get that gift for your mom. Still time to get that gift for your mom. You know she wants to hear from you. You know she wants to see you every day. Well, that's not possible for many of you.

[Matt Binder]

The air travel would be crazy for me.

[Sam Cedar]

Air travel and just also will. May interfere with that a little bit. But nevertheless, you can give her a great Mother's Day gift and you give her a call, but you give her an aura digital picture frame. I, I've mentioned this a couple of times during my break. Went with my girlfriend, visited her family, brought a gift because I'm a polite person and it was an aura digital frame. They loved it, loved it. Literally sent me a text saying they're buying seven more. They got a lot of kids, but they're going to put multiple ones in their house and then they're going to get ones for the kids and then they get pictures of their kids, kids, the grandkids. I mean, it all goes around and it's all super easy to do. It's got unlimited storage, super easy to set up. You can have photos and videos. It plays videos up to 30 seconds. It plays live, you know, live photos from Apple from an iPhone. You can send it directly from your phone through their app. You can send it to multiple frames in your house. You can send it to multiple frames around the globe. It's super easy. And you can give the app access. So you can give your kids access to your frame and your kids can give them access to their frame. It really is easy. The Photos look like real prints or frames have been meticulously calibrated for high resolution display. You can frame instantly from anywhere like literally populates immediately or it's got a great deal for Mother's day. For a limited time listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com get 35 bucks off plus free shipping on their best selling Carver matte frame. That's a U R A frames.com promo code Majority support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. We'll put all the info in the YouTube and podcast descriptions and the trucker hats. We've just been informed on the trucker hats. We put this up that the only USA producer of the trucker hats has a delay in shipping them. Therefore for the Max left and the patch hats I just want to make aware of this there's going to be a five to six week delay because it's the only US producer of trucker hats that we that exist and and that's where we're going for these. But they're sweet hats. But we only do produced in the US and out of our union shop. That's the way we roll. So sometimes there's a little bit of inconvenience. Look, you know, $30, you have two dolls, whatever.

[Matt Binder]

You have two max left hats.

[Sam Cedar]

You can have two max left. You can have as many Max left hats as you want. You just gotta wait a couple of weeks. But good things come to those who wait. All right, quick break. When we come back we're going to be talking to Professor Ifran Nurudin, professor of Indian politics at Georgetown University on what's going on with Pakistan and India. We'll be right back after this.

[Matt Binder]

Sam.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

It.

[Sam Cedar]

We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Vigeland out today. Want to welcome to the program Professor Irfan Nruddin, professor of Indian politics at Georgetown University. Professor, thanks so much for joining us.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Thank you for having me.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's start with a fairly I would, I would imagine for you is a rudimentary question but just as far as I remember off the top of my head, I feel like it's been about 20 years since we've had India and Pakistan on the brink of or what appears to be maybe the brink of a, of an all out war. Just give us some history and why Kashmir is such a flashpoint relative to these two countries.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Yeah. You know, if there's one thing that's going to be guaranteed about your show today, it's that the Indians will be unhappy and so will the Pakistanis about anything. I say so with that because it's a complicated and contested history. The Cliff Notes version of this is in 1947 when partition occurred to what was then British India, from which we get the modern countries of India and Pakistan, the Indian princely kingdom of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir was basically contested. It was a majority Muslim population in that area. Pakistan is part of its claim to being a Muslim country, wanted and believed that folks should be part of the new Pakistan. India, as part of its claim that this was a multi religious, secular republic, wanted Kashmir to be part of it. And ever since then it didn't get settled in 47. And ever since then it's been a flashpoint leading to all out war on three occasions in the last 75 years. The most recent one, though just to correct the record, was in 2019 when a similar sort of terrorist attack on the Kashmir side, the Indian side of the border, led to India actually flying fighter jets across the border. The first incursion into Pakistani sovereign airspace since the war in 99. At that time, an Indian Air Force pilot was shot down and taken prisoner of war. Fortunately, karma heads prevailed then and you know, everyone kind of went back to their sides of the border and we didn't get the all out war. But as you point out, Sam, this has been constant, not quite as long as the US President seems to think. He keeps talking, Trump keeps talking about these people having fought for centuries. Someone used to tell him that the country only came into being in 47, but that's besides the point. But since independence, it's been a constant thorn in the side of South Asia because it prevents peace and stability in the region.

[Sam Cedar]

Let's start with just in terms of the leadership, what we've talked, I think you know a significant amount about Narendra Modi on this program. He's been Prime Minister of India for quite some time now and he has. He's a nationalist, he's a right wing figure, I think some would argue bordering on fascist in many respects. Tell us what you can about Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif. And just so we get a sense of how the leadership of the two countries at this moment might differ or compare or contrast in the past and what that might tell us about how, how far this, this conflict might go.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Right, so the Pakistan side of the border, there are actually two leaders we should be talking about. One is obviously the Prime Minister, Shabbat Sharif. Shabbat Sharif is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif who had been Prime Minister of Pakistan earlier was ousted because of rampant corruption under his personal watch and the government, he actually kind of went into exile in London. But after Imran Khan, who was the prime minister for the last many years in Pakistan, fell out of favor with the military establishment, was deposed and is now in prison, Shabazz Sharif came back in. Right. He had the family legacy. He had been a politician in Pakistan, though not at the national level before, but with the family brand. All of that was sort of the compromise candidate for the anti Imran faction as someone who'd have the name recognition after gravitas. So he's the prime minister until this moment was very much seen as in some sense a caretaker prime minister. Right. Not going to rock the boat, not going to sort of do anything to annoy the military establishment, but also not do anything particularly dramatic. Main job was to try and get Pakistan's economy, which is pretty miserable, on track. Something that would prevent it from being the constant, let's go get another IMF program. The other major figure here is Pakistan's military. And right now the chief of the Pakistan military is a man named General Munir. The reason that's important is because there's very few analysts who think that any of the decisions relevant to what's going on now or that have led up to this are being made by the civilian government in Islamabad. The sense is that all of this has run out of the military. They are the true powers. And in the Pakistani establishment, that sort of Rawalpindi, which is sort of the headquarters. General headquarters for the military. And Munir has sort of made very clear that his stance is that Pakistan does not, you know, flourish if it allows India to push it around. India has invested heavily in its relationship with the United States and upgrading its military weaponry. And China has become the supplier of choice to Pakistan as especially once the United States backed away from Pakistan over the last five or six years. And so you have over here a military general who's trying to establish the relevance of the military for Pakistani society and for being powerful in Pakistani daily life, has invested in Chinese weaponry and sees his job as showing Pakistani citizens and showing his Indian counterparts that Pakistan can be bullied and pushed around and that they will respond kind with kind. Right. That's a bad recipe. Right. So as you point out on India side, a strong, well, entrenched prime minister who's extremely popular domestically has made his brand a pretty macho hyper nationalism. A military that's invested in a lot more hardware wants to prove to the world that it is a big Boy, right. Ready to sort of be a major superpower to content China to be an ally of the United States. On the Pakistan side, a country that might feel a bit beleaguered economically feels like it has been taken for granted by the United States, discarded like yesterday's newspaper once it was no longer useful. For Afghanistan has built a relationship with China, but also whose entire existential identity relies on a claim to Kashmir and on being anti India. And so it's a toxic combination for bad things happening, especially given that both sides have nuclear weapons as well. The only positive is that it's a pretty well established playbook, right? I mean, they kind of get to the brink. The lob bombs across the border, they throw a couple of missiles, innocents get killed, right? But they try and keep the numbers down. They're very selective in the targets to make sure they don't hit anything that could really blow the lid off everything. The big change for 2025 compared to even 2019 is that they've just got many cooler toys, right? Supplied by the defense manufacturers of the globe. Drones, new surface to air missiles, new air to air missiles that give a general a chance to show off his newest toys, and they don't tend to want to avoid that opportunity. And so the concern here is that in the last two days, we have gone from missile attack, air to air missiles, drone technology now being deployed that is penetrating deeper into both countries. So it does feel like they're on the ladder of escalation. The hope is that both have demonstrated to their domestic audiences, hey, look how tough we are. We showed the other side, we gave them a bloody nose, and eventually things go back to status quo.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay? And so, and we should say, I think most people would be aware that this latest round of hostilities was a function of a militant attack in Kashmir that ended up killing 32, 26 Indian tourists. Now, you said that Kashmir for Pakistan is an existential issue in. In what way? And then let's get into what we know about this attack and what potential relationship, or at least what the potential relationship is between these militants and the Pakistani government.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Existential in the sense that the claim to justify the creation of Pakistan out of British India at the end of British colonialism. So we're talking the period really from 1940 to 1947, when partition occurs, is that Indian Muslims, so pre colonial colonial era, Indian Muslims would never be equal citizens under an independent India that was dominated by a Hindu population that outnumbers Muslims at that point would have been three to two or something like that and so the claim being articulated by the founders of modern day Pakistan was what is sometimes described as a two nation theory. The idea that, you know, these are separate cultures, separate religions that need separate nations in that spirit of self determination that animated much of the globe in the 1920s, 30s, 40s. If a Muslim majority state like Kashmir, right. Could have been shown to be a functional part of a modern secular India, it puts the lie to the idea that the only way Muslims could be secure in a post British South Asia would be to be in a Muslim majority country. So in that sense, historians argue that this sort of really informed why Kashmir became so critical to the Pakistani imagination of, you know, these Muslims have been left behind, they need to be incorporated into the Indian state. Of course, it's a land border. And so it's very strategic piece of land in terms of, you know, defending the larger part of the country as well. The military essentially became very dominant in early Pakistani, you know, independent era, partly because it was able to justify disproportionate investment in the military for a brand new country because it was trying to defend this border. I mean, we leave aside for right now what was then East Pakistan, what is today Bangladesh. But for a variety of reasons, the military's entire identity became we are the ones who are keeping us this country safe against a hostile India. We are the only hope of recovering for Pakistan that which is rightfully ours, which is, you know, what they refer to as Indian Occupied Kashmir, but you know, different names that are politically sensitive on both sides of the border for this piece of land. So that's the existential side of things. Right. It's partly just what it means to be Pakistani in a particular imagination. I'm not suggesting all Pakistanis behind, but in a particular imagination is we are the home for South Asian Muslims and definitely for those who were part of British India. And if we left some of them behind, it is our job and responsibility to bring them home, as it were. But also one would might argue that if they can succeed in India, it gives the Indians the upper hand at saying, look, we told you we'd be secular, we told you we'd be democratic. And so your creation of Pakistan was a, was a conceit that wasn't justified by anything on the ground.

[Sam Cedar]

There's an apparently there's no as of yet sell by date for these theories. Right. I mean.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

No, you know, it's a gift that keeps on giving. The politician willing to go to the well and exploit it. Right. I mean, it's like it's permanent. It's a ready made issue on both sides. You have textbooks that for 75 years have reflected a very particular version. I grew up in India, right? The version of all of these events that I learned in my textbooks as a school kid obviously reflected the Indian official line on this. The maps that Indian school students study in geography class for South Asia, different than the Pakistani maps, are different than the ones that Americans do. My daughters are high schoolers in the US will see a different map, right? Where the land borders are, the national borders are, et cetera. So these are contested borders. We know that nationalism is an emotive, very always evergreen political subject. And in the modern era, if you fast forward 80 years from that moment of creation, you have these same issues being debated, but with different resonance and the different stakes. Now in India, you're once again relitigating history to say, hey, India was and always will be a Hindu nation. Yes, it's secular in its constitution, but the core of it is a Hindu nationalism. It is, you know, we are proud to be Hindu. This is the source of it. You can see parallels, of course, in the United States of this revamped revanchist or Christian nationalism, Judeo Christian tradition. But what it means to be American is fundamentally a Christian identity. Yes, we might allow other people to live here, but don't forget it's a Christian nation. We have the same thing playing in India. And on the Pakistani side of things, you have a much more virulent Islamist ideology in certain political figures and certain military figures. And so you mentioned this relationship with the militants, with the Pakistani establishment realized some time ago that was, you know, three wars that they fought and lost, right, was that conventional warfare against India, a much larger, more economically successful country, was never going to be in its advantage. And so what they have really done, and they've admitted this, so this is not speculation, is really invested in irregular warfare, right? The using the use of militants that are armed, trained even. There's always plausible deniability for the establishment because you can't quite get the paper trail linking one account to the next. But they're trained in Pakistan, they come across the border, they, you know, all of that kind of thing. This latest attack on 22 April was the most egregious of them. It was explicitly against civilians. 26 tourists in Kashmir, which is one of the most beautiful places on God's earth, attacked in a field, killed. Lots of anecdotal evidence that the militants targeted people on the basis of their religion, asking them to identify whether they were Hindu, whether they were Muslim or not. And if they weren't Muslim, killing them, if they were Muslim, sparing them, that's a deliberate choice to inflame particular kind of anti Muslim prejudice on the Indian side, which then further justifies in their minds this is why we need to defend all Muslims against India. And so it just constantly goes on. And the only people who suffer throughout are the locals and the poor people in these countries and who's fueled armies. Right. All the soldiers that will die in any escalation of this conflict represent the least well off, the least educated members of these two countries. And so it's just really tragic all the way around.

[Sam Cedar]

What of the timing? I mean, if these militant groups are at least in some way, maybe not directly controlled by the Pakistani government, but are at least sort of encouraged and incubated in some fashion, what do we make of the timing? Like, why now? What's the value to having this conflict? Whether they anticipate it sort of like wrapping up and being a, like its own epoch or, you know, escalating.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Yeah. So two scenarios, as you suggest, Sam. One is sort of let's assume that they thought this would stick to the regular playbook. We strike, we come home, there's, there'll be some retaliation, but it doesn't go any further. And, you know, in a week we got it wrapped up and we put it aside. One possibility is that, you know, this is not as well controlled. Right. I mean, this, we saw this, of course, for years in Afghanistan where we thought we had assets. And then you realize you can't control these guys quite as easily. You don't just pick up the phone and say, don't do this. They have a mind of their own. They're radical elements that aren't easily controlled. And so whether or not this is directly coordinated in terms of timing, but what is true is that the Pakistani economy is weak, the civilian government is very much under strain. Imran Khan's imprisonment is a constant challenge for the current government because Imran Khan remains extremely popular as a social figure in Pakistani politics. And so a rally around the flag, right? We punch India. Let's remind everyone that we're Pakistani first as opposed to political parties could have been seen as being, hey, this is worth whatever blowback occurs because we don't think the Indians will escalate all that much. What's different this time, and maybe where they miscalculated is that the attack happened on 22 April, and India basically did nothing other than A bunch of diplomatic moves and one abrogation of the Indus Water Treaty, which is very, very important because this is the water that feeds the Punjab in Pakistan. It's a massive amount of water. This is literally human humanitarian disaster in the making. If the water stays off for very long, it will devastate fields. People rely on this for their livelihood kind of stuff. But it didn't escape militarily until two days ago. Right? So there was two weeks, clearly, of India deciding how it wanted to strike back, what it thought it could do. And we don't know, of course, yet whether the Pakistani establishment had built that into their calculus, whether they had anticipated a more immediate tit for tat that would get resolved more quickly. What we've seen on the Indian side is a, I think, a more aggressive retaliation, right? Both in terms of the choice of targets and the geography of those targets. We saw the Pakistani have a pretty robust response, including, they claim, shooting down five Indian fighter jets, which would be really a big loss for the Indian air force and crew. And over the last 24 hours, including in real time, right now, we're hearing reports of drone warfare by both sides that are penetrating quite deep into territory. So getting outside of the Kashmir area, right? Imagine just walls going all the way to the sky from Kashmir. We are breaching that geography. And so that runs the risk of one drone strike that goes arrived, that hits a hospital, that hits a school, God forbid, right? Lots of innocents died, all hits a military target, and suddenly we're just on this, what academics refer to as the ladder of escalation, where the tit for tat just keeps on going. And we are in a world right now where the normal US Influence to basically call both countries and say, hey, step down, calm down, is at a low, both because of the way Trump runs foreign policy and Rubio. I'm not a fan of sort of what I think is the inherent capabilities on that front, but also because it is in the moment of transition in the United States. And again, if you were really kind of thinking out loud about why now? One possibility is that the Pakistanis said, hey, DC Is a chaos machine right now. We are likely to get away with this right now before DC Gets attacked together. Whereas if we do it a year from now, once everything is settled down in Washington, an action like this gets our wrists, our knuckles wrapped more harder kind of thing. So lots of different things. My basic intuition is that this is not a time when they were looking really down the pike. I think the militants wanted a soft target this is tourist season in India, so they decided that they were going to go after civilians and particular tourists, which would be largely non Muslim populations coming to Kashmir. This would be about when you would expect it to occur.

[Sam Cedar]

Is what's happening with trade in any way implicating this? Because, I mean, presumably, right. If Pakistan is relying on China more and India is developing a closer relationship with the United States, this trade stuff is sort of in the background, but lining up in such a way that perhaps China might be more reluctant right now to say to Pakistan, you need to tap the brakes a little bit than they would have at a time where there wasn't sort of a unilateral trade war against it by the United States.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Absolutely right. I think China has a lot to gain from fomenting instability in the region and definitely keeping India on its toes, because India that's distracted by a possible war situation on its western border is India that has less energy to be focused on how to respond to the Chinese economic giant. That is its fundamental challenge. But it's unlikely to be asking Pakistan to step down. This has been a great showcase for Chinese weaponry. Right. The Chinese military manufacturers, stocks have all jumped this morning on the markets because of what was seen as a really successful demonstration in real time and of its capabilities. A very macabre thing about the state of the world, people shooting each other down and stock markets saying, hey, we should buy more of that stock, because clearly their weapons work. But so we don't see that in China. And on the India side, I think India really sees that it's got the US where it wants it. The US has made very clear in a bipartisan way. Right. It was true, and Biden is true over here, that they're not going to ask difficult questions of India about democratic backsliding, about religious nationalism, because India is a large part of the strategic plan for countering China. But you also have Trump going aggressively in favor of trying to find trade deals. I put that in air quotes. Right. India is a part of that. They're negotiating supposedly a trade deal right now. And I imagine India knows that the United States is unlikely to take a hard stance against it. Right, because it wants the trade deal.

[Sam Cedar]

That's the flip side of this, is that it actually benefits India as well, in the sense that the US Is probably going to be easier on a trade deal with India because they the.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Trade dealers to win. And so all the rhetoric coming out of Washington, whether it was J.D. vance who was just in India, whether it's what Rubio said And if you look at any standard Indian newspaper mainstream, all the more fringe ones, they all lead with the idea that all the calls made by Washington reaffirm India's right to defend its sovereign borders and is willing to support India's right to retaliate within reason, etc. So the rhetorical space on both sides, one supported by China, one supported by the United States, is that we have got right on our side. Now again, this is, we are still in the normal established playbook territory, right? The hope is that a couple more of these skirmishes over the weekend and then everyone sort of goes back and tries to be grown ups about it. I was more, I'd be more optimistic if I thought that there was really heavy pressure being placed by Washington and in conjunction with other actors than I think is happening right now. But I'm still hoping that's the case.

[Sam Cedar]

Does the shift in how the US relates to Pakistan and India? The shift, it seems to me, is two part, right? One is there's been a, just a broad general pullback on us attempting to influence other countries, you know, broadly speaking, right. In terms of like we just don't want to expend the resources that are associated with keeping the peace, as it were, in a generic sense. Like it's, you know, it's their problem, you know, as if we don't live in an interconnected world. So you have that element, but you also have the element that the US is seems to me, at least within my recollection, playing a different role, like putting a little bit more weight on the India side than it would have in the past. And then China alternatively seems to also be doing a slightly different thing insofar as being more incentivized to be, I guess to have Pakistan as a client state of some sort, maybe that's a little strong. But where does that head, is that create a more dangerous situation or does that create sort of like, I don't know, some type of like new Cold War dynamic stability?

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Well, I mean it's, it is both of those, I think, right? One is that we have both sides feel empowered because they've got a major global superpower right in the funding them, supporting them, being willing to give them the latest weaponry. It cannot be understated how much fancier the technology on display, again if you want to be just cold about it, is today compared to even six years ago because of how much investment has been made. The claim that the Pakistanis were able to shoot down five Indian fighter jets, not confirmed by India right now. Was because of a weapon system called PL15, which is Chinese made, which is an air to air missile with a range of something on the order of 150 to 200 kilometers, like miles. Right. This is something that Pakistanis could have dreamt of. It changes the entire strategic balance on their side. The use of the drones right now, largely Turkish made in India states, largely Israeli made. Right. Is again, gives them the capacity to attack deeper in maybe targets, it's much cheaper. So they're sending 20, 30 of these across borders armed with warheads that can attack targets. And you don't have to worry about your soldiers getting killed, your pilots getting killed. So the potential for that escalation rises. And a United States that is not, doesn't have the personnel. Where is that deep expertise at DoD? Where is the deep expertise? But we fired a lot of those guys, we demoted a bunch of them. But also it's a transition. So even if it wasn't the dojification of the federal government, they still haven't had a chance to appoint a permanent ambassador. So we're going to say where two nuclear countries in the region are fighting with each other, and the United States does not have a permanent ambassador in either capital. So who's, who's calling these guys together? Who's sort of saying, hey, here's what the US Wants, here's what our interests in the situation are. We've had relationships with both countries for 70 years. Right. Who's in it? So there's just a vacuum of that kind of granular below the headline. Diplomatic leadership. That is typically what you associate with superpower kind of, you know, realpolitik. The second part of it is what.

[Sam Cedar]

Could possibly go wrong?

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Yeah. You know, who could think, who could have thought that anything could go wrong? So I thought we were all going to be winning all the time. But look, the second part of this is then, you know, there is a domestic logic over here that this is an unwinnable war for both sides because there's no clear objective. Right. And there's no military objective that can be accomplished by fighting. There's only so much punishment you can inflict on either side. It's not winnable because at the end of the day, we are under nuclear umbrella. And so the Cold War kind of stability to which you refer, the downside of that is that it keeps a lid on sort of just how bad things can get, but it allows for everything under that lid to be, you know, par for the course. Right. And so we just get this low level bubbling all the time attacks on civilians, missiles going and suddenly, you know, we get keeps people like me relevant. Right. Because then all of a sudden we got to talk about India and Pakistan again. But this is just we are now 80 years in and I think the cold war stability that we see returning might keep again us from getting to the worst outcomes, but it definitely doesn't get us to the best outcomes either.

[Sam Cedar]

Irfan Nehru Dan PROFESSOR of Indian Politics, Georgetown University thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Thanks.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, folks, we're going to head into the fun half of the program and I will be joined. I'm not used to doing this, so I don't know. TABLE yeah. Brandon Sutton from the Discourse will be joining us and a guy named Matt. How do I pronounce this binder from do do owned.

[Matt Binder]

I don't think it's called domed.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, doomed and scam economy. And of course, a producer emeritus at the Majority Report will be joining us. Just a reminder, it is your stop. Your stop. What?

[Matt Binder]

It's your stop.

[Sam Cedar]

It's your stop. Time to get off.

[Matt Binder]

It is your exit.

[Sam Cedar]

Here you go. It's your support that keeps this show going. You can help us what we do here every day by becoming a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, but you also get the fun half and you help this show survive and thrive. Join themjorityreport.com Also, don't forget Just Coffee.co op Fair Trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code majority get 10 off. You can buy the Majority report blend. You can buy single origin coffees. Folks love just coffee. They love it. Also, I will say these trucker hats, if they weren't flying off the shelf, we wouldn't have to announce that they were going to be a little bit delayed. But weird stuff going on and apparently there's only one trucker hat manufacturer in the country.

[Matt Binder]

These tariffs are going to, you know, create a whole bunch of trucker hat factories.

[Sam Cedar]

We're going to have trucker hat factories popping up everywhere. I would say that our merch probably has the lowest margin profit margin of any any single entities merch ever union and American made in this country. So wear it with pride. Be max left or just be trucker patch as it were. Shop. MajorityReportRadio.com for that. Matt.

[Irfan Nooruddin]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

On Tuesday night talked to Alex Skopic of Current affairs about a few of his pieces, including one. People may know that China has slightly more billionaires than America at about 800 or so. But what people might not know is that they have 432 fewer than they did two years ago. We talked about, talk to Alex about how they got started making ex billionaires.

[Sam Cedar]

Which is a culling billionaires. I love that.

[Matt Binder]

Get them under control. And we also talked about how Trump is a landlord and how that sort of part. Part of his identity kind of informs not only his policy, but also how the way. The way he looks at Gaza and.

[Emma Vigeland]

That sort of stuff.

[Matt Binder]

So patreon.com left reckoning just refreshed.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, we'll see you in the fun half. You are in for it. All right, folks, 646-257-3920. See you in the fun. Are you ready? Who sent us this?

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[Sam Cedar]

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[Irfan Nooruddin]

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[Irfan Nooruddin]

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[Irfan Nooruddin]

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[Sam Cedar]

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[Irfan Nooruddin]

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[Sam Cedar]

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[Emma Vigeland]

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[Matt Binder]

Well, the problem with those is they're like 45 seconds long, so I don't know if they're enough breaks.

[Sam Cedar]

That's nonsense.

[Emma Vigeland]

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[Sam Cedar]

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[Emma Vigeland]

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[Sam Cedar]

Oh.

[Emma Vigeland]

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[Sam Cedar]

What? What?

[Irfan Nooruddin]

What?

[Sam Cedar]

What?

[Irfan Nooruddin]

What? What?

[Emma Vigeland]

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[Irfan Nooruddin]

What?

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[Matt Binder]

Have you tried doing an impression on a college campus?

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[Sam Cedar]

Why reasonable people across the divide can't.

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[Irfan Nooruddin]

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[Emma Vigeland]

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[Irfan Nooruddin]

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[Sam Cedar]

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[Emma Vigeland]

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[Irfan Nooruddin]

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[Emma Vigeland]

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[Sam Cedar]

I am a total fussy.