Key Reflections
* We are moving from a multipolar to a bipolar world, with China on one side along with Russia as a junior partner.
* For Vladimir Putin, a thriving democratic Ukraine, geo-politically important, and close ties to former Eastern Bloc states like Poland, is a political challenge for the Kremlin.
* The withdrawal from Afghanistan led Russia and China to believe the West is in decline. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has rekindled a willingness in the West to stand together.
* China will support Russia diplomatically, tactically, and materially, but there will be limitations due to concerns about secondary sanctions from the U.S. China will push the West to consider Beijing’s role for future negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
* China has played a deft hand in bringing a truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia, demonstrating Beijing’s desire to strategically position itself as the leading global problem solver.
* The Ukraine crisis features in China’s strategic mindset surrounding its Taiwan policy and its tensions with India in the Himalayas. The Quad is evolving into a bloc to counter China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific.
Transcript:
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
TM: Tim Marshall
SG: Welcome to the NATO DEEP Dive podcast, I’m your host Dr. Sajjan Gohel and in this episode I speak with the journalist, author, and broadcaster Tim Marshall who specialises in foreign affairs and international diplomacy.
In our discussion we talk about the future of geography and geo-politics and how China and Russia are increasingly aligning and what this means for the West and the Indo-Pacific.
Tim Marshall, welcome back to NATO DEEP Dive.
TM: Great to be here and holding my breath.
SG: Well, you were, in fact, the very first guest for the inaugural episode and now you have the distinct honour of being the first person to make two appearances on this podcast.
TM: I hope you’re not going to bore your listeners!
SG: No not at all! Well, when you were first on the podcast, that was back in November 2021, quite a few things have happened since then! What stood out from that discussion was that you coined the term ‘The Dangerous Decade.’ Since then, we’ve seen tensions mount between the West and China, and then also Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Are these examples of what you envisaged, if we start with Ukraine?
TM: Very much so, at the risk of—I don’t want to sound like, ‘I told you so’ obviously, we all get things right and we will get things wrong. But I just looked at the trajectory. And I’d written 10 years ago that we were in a form of Cold War with Russia, and I stand by that, in broad brush terms, because history does not repeat itself it rhymes. And so, this sort of form of Cold War looks a little bit like the previous one, but obviously is different but I think in shorthand, it’s a useful phrase, especially for the layperson, like myself. So, it was inevitable, and I had written, as early as 2015, that having taken a bite out of Ukraine, Putin was not going to stop, he was going to come back for a bigger bite. Obviously, I didn’t know how big or exactly when. And so, in that respect, it wasn’t a surprise.
And ditto with China, I have been saying for about five years, I think we will move out of the multipolar world which we’re well into now and probably by the next decade, we will be in a form of bipolar world, with blocks emerging and it’s a Chinese-led with Russia as a junior partner. So, to come to the end of the answer. And then, after we spoke, I think it was after we spoke, but America—and NATO listeners will know there’s a military term for this—they ran away from Afghanistan, as did we, in unedifying scenes. And it was clear to me that that would be followed by a test, because—a tactical retreat, of course, is what it really was—when your opponent looks like they’re off balance, that’s when you prod them in the chest and see if they fall over or whether they stand firm. And so, both of the big powers were going to test the Americans and the collective alliance that it leads. And so, the test came in Ukraine, and to Putin’s amazement, they stood up. And then when Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan, that gave the Chinese, not the excuse, the reason, the rationale, to also push hard, and so Tensions have risen in both arenas.
SG: You spoke about prodding your opponent in the chest and certainly there’s been a lot of talk about the way the Afghanistan withdrawal took place, seemed to create the impression in the minds of individuals like Putin that perhaps the West is weakening. What do you believe were Putin’s real reasons for the invasion of Ukraine?
TM: Sorry, Sajjan, as you know, it’s multi-faceted, there are many reasons. There is, on the grand scale of things, his worldview, he’s on record as saying that the Soviet Union was another name for the Russian Empire, something which I’ve long always thought, I never fell for that, ‘the joys of Marxist-Leninism being spread around Eastern Europe,’ and neither did the Eastern Europeans, which is why all of them are now in NATO or the EU. So, there is that grand worldview. There’s also the challenge to Putin, domestically, if the Russian people can see that just next door in Ukraine, there is a fledgling and potentially flourishing democracy, and that’s difficult for him politically. There are the natural resources that the ports on the Black Sea, Odessa, there’s the grain, some of the minerals that Ukraine has.
And then a big factor, often the one overlooked is the geography. The fact that they lost the bottleneck, which is Poland. The North European plain is flat all the way from France to the Urals, its narrowest point is Poland. Russia has been invaded from that direction many times, most famously, Napoleon in 1812, and the Germans in 1914 and 1941. So, they always sought to plug that gap. If they can’t plug it, they fall back on the flat ground in front of them as the buffer zone, which is Belarus and Ukraine. And so, Belarus is nailed on, but when the biggest part of the buffer zone flips away from you, you act. And so, I think that was another one and quite a major rationale for Putin and it allows him to tell the Russian people, ‘We’re in danger, we’re under threat, NATO’s advancing on us,’ and to have a willing audience amongst many Russians for that rationale and logic.
SG: This NATO dynamic is of course, pivotal because Putin has had this pathological obsession that somehow NATO is encroaching on Russia’s borders and its sphere of influence, and he also probably thought that NATO was weak and divided, but what we’ve seen since his invasion is that, in many ways, the opposite has proven to be the case. NATO may have had its challenges with the Afghanistan withdrawal, but they seem to have consolidated with Ukraine and in fact expanded with the eventual additions of Finland and Sweden, which is only going to actually increase NATO’s borders with Russia. Do you think he anticipated that?
TM: No, not for a second Sajjan. You probably read his essay the summer before the invasion, a 6,000-word essay about the weak West and the strong Slavs and Slavic nation of which Ukraine was a part and the brotherly coming together and all that. I don’t think for a second he thought what has happened would happen and indeed, I would have been unsure because—and forgive me for saying running away in my opening remarks, it was just to be provocative—there were reasons to leave Afghanistan, but I repeat, that the manner of leaving was unedifying. So, I think that he and Xi both think of the West as in decline, and let’s be fair, many of us have thought that the West may be in decline, and the EU throughout the years hasn’t often shown the willingness to stand together and to be robust, and of course, many of them are NATO members.
So, I actually think we’ve surprised ourselves by how robust we’ve been, and I think it must be down to—well it’s down to several things—but two in particular. One that we had at the helm, Biden, as opposed to Trump, because I’m not sure that Trump would have rounded up the posse in the way that Biden has done. And without American leadership, I don’t think what has happened would have happened. That’s the first thing.
But the second thing, and it’s probably the bigger one, is just the sheer scale of what has happened. The sheer scale of hundreds of 1000s of troops crossing a border, smashing missiles into civilian areas of cities, biting great chunks out of territory, in 21st century Europe. I just think that that holiday from history, that Europe foolishly thought it was having after the end of the Cold War, this psychological shock, this realisation of the enormity of what had happened, I think that galvanised so many people. The Brits have been very stalwart and forthright, the Eastern Europeans who always had a much more sanguine view of Russia and Putin than I think most of the Western Europeans did, and the thing just came together, and everyone thought, ‘this far and no further,’ and a year on 13/14 months on, it’s still holding.
SG: There are so many aspects that are concerning which you’ve already identified, and maybe it will also provide a window as to where this conflict is going. You’ve got the fact that the Wagner group, which is a paramilitary private company that Russia is basically utilising on the ground, they’ve been accused of committing gross human rights abuses. You’ve also got concerns over the nuclear energy installations in Ukraine, which Russia seems to be treating almost like confetti in the way targeted strikes have occurred. Putin doesn’t seem to be too bothered by the fact that he’s lost over a dozen generals and his recruitment of people has only had to be increased with conscription because they are running out of people, yet he still doesn’t seem to care about the loss of life. The West is not going to abandon Ukraine anytime soon. Where is this conflict heading?
TM: Probably protracted. Let me deal with the first thing about the loss of life. The First World War and the shock of the First World War did lead to so many advances and differences in fighting warfare. And most of the western countries actually, because of the incredible loss of life, they realised it wasn’t really acceptable. The elite accepted it wasn’t acceptable to sacrifice huge numbers of people in human waves. And we didn’t do so much of that in the Second World War. But the Russians, who did it in the First World War, repeated it in the Second World War, [they] just threw human waves into the meat grinder with the idea that there’s so many more of us than you. And it does appear that that is still the rationale. We know that their officers are incredibly unpopular amongst the rank and file, they don’t have that backbone of the NCOs that most of the western militaries have, they just have this different approach. And yet again, they are just throwing human waves, with the idea that we’ll shoot you in the back—or in the front—if you turn around and run away and retreat.
So, they’re still in that rationale, which means that they can—as far as the Kremlin is concerned and the high command—they can do attrition. And there’s so many clocks ticking. I mean, you know because you know military things, there’s the clock of the weather, there’s the clock of the ground conditions, there’s the clock of patience and of resolve, there’s the clock of the U.S. election.
So, all these different clocks are ticking. And again, you know as a student of history and warfare, that sides don’t give up as long as they think there’s a chance of victory, and so he still thinks there’s a chance of victory. They haven’t exhausted each other yet. Public opinion back home either hasn’t turned or is not available to express itself. And so, that points towards a protracted [war], going into at least next year. I was writing in the autumn that the most optimistic thing was that in 12 months’ time, as in this autumn, they could come to the table after both sides fail in the summer. That’s still optimistic.
SG: Well, that definitely doesn’t bode very well for where this is heading. You briefly touched upon China, and China gets mentioned a lot when it comes to its relationship with Russia. There’s also been talk about China maybe even being a potential power broker in the Ukraine conflict.
TM: I think it will be eventually, sorry, carry on, Sajjan.
SG: Well, I was going to ask you to expand on that. Could Beijing play the role of intermediary and what ultimately will that look like? And would the West be even willing to let China get involved?
TM: It may not have a choice? Right, the context I think, is this and I accept I’m guessing and when it comes to peering into the mind of Putin and Xi, we’re all guessing. I think that Xi, as the senior partner, was quite happy as things were going along in 2020. We were looking weaker, theoretically may be or have been in decline, and Russian and Chinese grey zone operations were doing a good job at undermining us from within, buying up institutions, influencing institutions, and from Xi’s point of view you didn’t need to go to war. So, again, this is a big debating point, did he know? I don’t think so. When they met in the Olympics, just four weeks before the invasion, did he greenlight it? I doubt it. Some people said he did. I think he’s furious with what Putin did. Because he doesn’t like instability, and he certainly doesn’t like people biting chunks out of countries and then saying they’re sovereign, because somebody might bite a piece out of China and call it Taiwan and say it’s sovereign. So, you put all that together, and I don’t think he’s happy. But as a famous British Prime Minister once said, ‘we are where we are.’
So, given we are where we are, he’s not about to pull the rug from Putin. And in fact, as you know, these Chinese weapons have shown up on the frontlines, whether they are officially sent we can’t prove, dual use equipment is being sent, but he won’t send heavy weapons because he doesn’t care that much, because it’s not existential for Xi, and he doesn’t want secondary sanctions because of the economy. But diplomatically he’ll support Putin, and here and there, he’ll support Putin, because also now that we are where we are, it doesn’t do China that much harm to see the West bleeding, certainly treasure and weapons. So, he’s not ready to step in yet.
But if we look to the future, what I got from the Moscow meeting recently, the big summit, as well as the trade deals with Xi on the world stage as a global leader, let’s not look at it from the Italian perspective or the British perspective, let’s look at it from Honduras, Nicaragua, Eritrea, well all of the Latin American countries, all the African countries, countries all over the world. They see a global leader bestriding the world. They see a power broker. And that’s how he’s positioned himself. And remember this came off the back of China bringing together the Saudis and the Iranians. They broke the diplomatic detente between them. It’s China that has recently flipped Honduras, that’s why I mentioned them, which is not going to recognise Taiwan anymore and is going to recognise China.
So, all those things came into play, and that’s why, sorry I interrupted you earlier by saying, I think they will play a role. Lula in Brazil has already said this 12-point plan can go somewhere, Putin was polite enough to say he’ll look at it. Now we all know that in its current iteration it is a non-starter, but Xi knows that as well. But he’s put it out there that he’s the potential problem solver. Biden is not speaking to both sides. China has got its diplomatic channels open to both sides, the foreign minister speaks to the Ukrainian foreign minister, and at some point, China can lean into this and be a broker. It can’t be the broker, but it can’t be a broker.
SG: To build on that, would Xi step in if it looked like Putin’s status, power, as President of Russia was under serious threat?
TM: I think so. What he doesn’t want is—they have a 4,000-kilometre-long border between them—he does not want massive instability in Russia, which could come if Russia, for example, lost Crimea and Putin ended up falling out of a window as people seem to do so often in Russia. It’s something, I don’t know if you’ve been tracking it, but the amount of top businesspeople that fall out of hotel windows in Russia is astonishing. They really should build some balconies with rails. So, he doesn’t want that degree of instability. So, yes, I think so. I think he’d step in in a number of ways, he’d step in if he thinks that Russia is going to fall apart because of a catastrophic defeat, he’ll step in if that means instability along the border, and he’ll step in, I think, if Russia looks like it genuinely was moving towards using a nuclear weapon. That unlimited friendship, we’ve seen the limits to it so many times, not least when he categorically, openly, told Putin, ‘You will not use nuclear weapons,’ there was no sort of nudging or politeness. He told Putin, ‘Don’t use nuclear weapons.’ So, I think he’d lean in then as well. He’ll lean in when it suits him.
SG: Leaning in, could that also entail maybe eventually providing weapons and lethal support?
TM: You can’t rule it out. I doubt it. I doubt it because of the secondary sanctions. As long as the Chinese economy—if the Chinese economy was roaring its way to massive success in being the dominant economy in the world, maybe. And he does know that we cannot sanction China that way we can sanction Russia because they’re too integrated and too important. As an aside, this is another reason why Cold War 2.0 is different, the Russian economy didn’t really matter in the previous iteration, the Chinese economy matters very much. But sending weapons would trigger secondary sanctions. And we do have levers, I don’t if you—actually Sajjan, I know you’ll have noticed because I don’t think very much gets past you—but you’ll have noticed that the Dutch, last month, have followed the Americans and will not be exporting super semiconductor chips to China, and they’re 10 years ahead of China, and the Netherlands is a world leader in this tech, which China needs. So, there are these levers, and that’s why I don’t think they would send heavy weapons because it’s not an existential matter for them, this European Civil War.
SG: Well, that’s an important point and observation and the Dutch example that you mentioned is definitely very—
TM: I knew you wouldn’t have missed that.
SG: Well, I think you and I often are treading on the same path of our research, so I think, what’s the saying? Great minds think alike.
TM: You do the research, I read the headlines. And read your papers.
SG: Well, I know you do a lot of primary research Tim. So, I think you’re being too modest there. If we focus more on China, itself. Beijing has played a deft hand in bringing a truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia. That took a lot of people by surprise, but then if you also look at what China was doing last year, in terms of being active in the Middle East, attending regional forums and summits, engaging with both countries, it wasn’t entirely a surprise. But in terms of its impact, how significant is this role that China is playing, as an intermediary, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, bearing in mind that these are two countries that have had a very tense relationship? And what does that also mean for the Middle East?
TM: I don’t think it’s a seismic move, but I certainly think it’s a significant one. And you’re right. If you followed what was going on last year, when you saw that Xi went to Riyadh and the Crown Prince rolled out the red carpet and couldn’t have been nicer to him, you realised that the Chinese, throughout the Middle East, are taking advantage of the lighter American footprint. Or to change analogies, if the Americans are moving out and a vacuum is created, the Chinese will seek to fill that vacuum. And then you saw, I think it was President Raisi, of Iran, then went to Moscow, and you realised something was up. And so yes, it wasn’t a massive surprise, but it shows this, as I said earlier, this move by China to position itself and their leader as one of the great, global problem solvers and I think they’ve been quite successful in that and in that perception, of China as a solution, not a problem. Many of us regard them as a problem, a lot of the world doesn’t, including Honduras, hence, they switched sides.
SG: You mentioned Honduras. It’s kind of interesting because what you’re seeing is that there are less than two dozen countries that recognise [Taiwan].
TM: I think it’s 14, because they haven’t actually broken yet, but they will this month, probably next month. So, yeah, it’ll be down to 13 countries that recognise Taiwan.
SG: And potentially that number will continue to ebb away. Where do we stand with China and the Indo Pacific, because tensions have ratcheted up with Taiwan and we are seeing that the Quad, which is the grouping with the United States, Australia, India, and Japan, they’re becoming more consolidated. South Korea and Japan are building bridges. Where is this all heading in the Indo-Pacific and specifically with China?
TM: It’s a stark example of the dividing lines that are being drawn all over the world. They’re being drawn in Latin America with the investment and the political plays that China is making in Latin America, ditto Africa. And of course, the key is the new geopolitical centre of the world, the Indo-Pacific. And you can see that line drawn quite clearly. And there’s tensions that will play out. But what China sees in front of it is that wall of the first island chain, which consists of American allies, people that are really tied to the Americans, the Japanese particularly are a treaty ally, the Philippines, you will have seen that the new agreement between the U.S. and Philippines, they’re going to allow access to more bases in the Philippines; and this is about Taiwan, also an American friend. Then you come all the way down to places like Malaysia and then down to Australia.
When you put all of them together, they are far more powerful than the Chinese, immeasurably more powerful. China probably will not reach parity with just the American military for a minimum of 10 years and probably 20 and possibly more. When you put the Japanese who are, as you know, rearming at a real lick and then you put this Philippines deal, and then you put Taiwan in, it’s just so much more powerful. So, this stark dividing line, of China and then what’s in front of it, is being drawn ever thicker. And briefly to go back to this Philippines idea, if you look at the map you’ve got between the Philippines and Japan lies Taiwan.
If China controls Taiwan, both the strait between the Philippines and Taiwan will then be controlled by China, and the strait between Taiwan and Japan will be controlled by China. Now the Philippines and Japan don’t want to lose their access and control of those straits. And hence, these new deals that are going on. And the Japanese high command is now liaising very closely with the Philippine High Command and the American High Command and they’re meshing them together. And this has been a construction process that has been in training for the whole of this century. As the geopolitical framework of the century is being built. And I think we’re really now seeing more than the scaffolding, we’re seeing not a finished construction, but that line is growing ever thicker. Sorry, that was a very long answer and rather convoluted, I hope you’ve gotten the gist of it.
SG: Well, it was a very important answer as well, to the fact that you’re providing the flesh on what looks like a substantive mechanism that is developing in the Indo-Pacific.
TM: You mentioned AUKUS earlier. Again, that’s part of it. And also, we tend to look only at Taiwan, and we sometimes forget that China has territorial claims on islands that Japan claims, and China has territorial claims on islands that the Philippines claims, so it is a real flashpoint. And at the moment just as the Europeans are holding together, that whole area, the Friends of America are very much remaining friends of America. Under Duterte, the previous Filipino President, they were wavering, they were hedging their bets, that’s finished. I think they’ve made their choice and that choice is to stick with the Americans for the time being.
SG: How much does the Ukraine crisis feature in the strategic mindset of the decision makers in Beijing when it comes to their policy on Taiwan?
TM: Am I allowed to ask you that question? And then I can critique your answer because you know that area better than I do, and perhaps we could talk about India, but carry on.
SG: Well, certainly, the perception that I have is that China has been looking at Ukraine in terms of their own regional challenges as well, because one was to see how the West was going to react and the second was also to see how the West has also increased its support for Taiwan, and also the regional dimensions that are a significant in terms of partnerships. So, I mentioned to you about the Quad, the South Korea-Japan Alliance, you’ve mentioned AUKUS, you’ve mentioned also the Philippines. You kind of see this realignment taking place or further alignment, I should say, which is probably going to take place anyway, but it seems to be at a greater pace than perhaps it would have been.
TM: I’d agree with all of it. And I think you can link it to Ukraine because they have absolutely watched the response. I would add to that, the psychological impact that has, that they’re not as weak and effete as we thought they were. They’re not necessarily in decline, although Beijing still very much pushes that line that they are in decline and China is continuing to rise and will be the dominant power. I’d add one more thing and that’s the sanctions. They looked at these really serious sanctions, and I know the Russians have all these different ways of getting around some of the sanctions and their economy is a long way from collapsing, but they are really hurting and they know that although they could do X, Y, and Z and we won’t sanction them, an invasion of Taiwan, they will be seriously sanctioned, the decoupling of their economy from the rich, advanced democracies. I don’t mean the West, I mean the rich advanced democracies, because then you put in Japan, South Korea, India, they would kick in, and that would really hurt the Chinese. And so, I think that is actually when you then look at the sanctions on Russia and I think that is a restraining factor in their planning for Taiwan.
SG: When it comes to the planning for Taiwan, this is just a question that actually occurred to me as we’ve been discussing this, Taiwan is one of the most important countries when it comes to the semiconductor industry.
TM: There’s a joke there’s a joke Sajjan, that the Taiwanese tell, which is that when the Chinese attack, head for the semiconductor factory, it’s the only place they won’t hit.
SG: Well, you’d hope so, because the world depends on those semiconductors. Does that drive the strategic thinking in Beijing, do you think?
TM: I think it’s a factor. I think they’re more concerned in building up their own capacity. They have lots of semiconductor factories, and they’re desperate to get the tech that the Taiwanese and the Dutch [have], Belgium is pretty good at this and to a lesser extent, the Americans. It’s funny, the Americans are very good at this stuff, but the real high-quality chips, the Americans are also not quite as advanced as one or two other countries. That’s what China really wants. It really wants to build up its own domestic industry, but to do that, it needs the knowledge. And the Americans have successfully persuaded the Dutch and others—well, and then they made their own minds up about this—‘why are we going to help the Chinese to catch us up because they’re a decade behind?’ when, in fact, lots and lots of these superchips will be used for their weaponry? It’s not necessarily in our interests.
So, yes, of course, it’s a factor. Of course, they’d love to have the Taiwanese semiconductors, but I don’t think they would gamble on invading the island predicated just on that. My confidence, such as it is, that they’re not going to invade anytime soon takes dents every now and again, because I’ve been again saying for years, I don’t see why Xi would gamble everything on an invasion. And here’s another connection back to Ukraine: they have seen how brilliant NATO’s weaponry is, in military terms, and how effective it is and how ineffective the Russian military is, and that might also give them pause for thought because they’re not sure, because they haven’t been tested, about their own stuff. So, why would you gamble everything because if you invade and lose and get driven back, which is possible, depending on whether the Americans would fight or not. Your credibility is gone. We could even end up with a communist party being overthrown or a military [takeover], all sorts of things would flow from it. Why are you going to gamble everything on that? But as I said, my confidence is dented from time to time because I was at a thing recently and there was a four-star American general who told me I was wrong, and he reckons they’ll do it by 2025.
SG: Well, I’ll put my reputation on the line right now and say that I actually agree with you, Tim.
TM: Well, let’s hope we’re right, for many reasons.
SG: Well, it’s good in some ways, perhaps problematic in other ways, because it may not be the actual beginning of where there is a crisis with China. I think the Himalayas is definitely very vulnerable.
TM: I’m glad you mentioned that. There’s also more than one way to skin a cat for example, I mean, the Kinmen islands, which are controlled by Taiwan, but are what? 20 miles off the coast of China, they could probably go for that without triggering a massive war or they could go for the blockade. There are all sorts of things. I’m interested that you think that the Himalayas is actually more dangerous, because I’m wondering whether the China-India, not confrontation, glowering at each other, in some ways, is not actually greater in the ocean than it is along the fault line of the Line of Actual Control up in the Himalayas. You think the Himalayas is where it could go ‘bang?’
SG: Yes, in fact, you could look at three particular fault lines along what’s called the Line of Actual Control between India and China. We saw three years ago that in the Galwan Valley, both India and China engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
TM: That was brutal, wasn’t it?
SG: It was brutal. The Chinese were using weapons with barbed wire, and you had fatalities on both sides and the only small saving grace is that both sides had agreed prior to this standoff that they wouldn’t use actual firearms. But you can imagine how that would have turned out. What you’re seeing is that increasingly there are these incursions that are taking place.
TM: Yeah, I’ve looked at the maps and it seems to be pretty obvious that one side is moving east to west and that would be China into India.
SG: Well, it’s interesting because the U.S. has also become more engaged in that and there’s been some interesting research coming out about the U.S. actually providing India with real time intelligence on Chinese troop movements. So, that angle is there. In fact, I will just acknowledge that one of our producers here, Marcus Andreopoulos, who’s actually written on this very issue to do with that.
TM: You know that they fought a very brief, mostly artillery war a few decades ago. And I know that both sides are building proper paved metal roads so they can transport kit there much more quickly and positioning heavier kit, but it’s still one of the most hostile terrains in the world, at an incredibly high altitude, with a limited amount of troops. And as was shown three years ago, with this incredible agreement, you can batter each other with clubs but just don’t pull a trigger, they are both aware of what’s at stake. So, why do you think that it can actually spark a full-scale war between them?
SM: Because it doesn’t seem to be stopping in terms of Chinese troop movement. It’s only increasing and it’s happening almost in sequences of every few years, then it’s becoming almost every year, and then it’s actually becoming every few months, and you’re looking at the volume of it and all it’s going to take is one mistake, one dynamic, and then it could spiral and it could increase. Now it’s interesting, because India is holding the presidency of the G20 for 2023. And since the Galwan Valley standoff a few years ago, there’s not been a bilateral meeting between the two leaders of India and China. That may arise this year, and it’ll be interesting to see what occurs. What I do think is kind of curious, is that China’s actions with India have only resulted in pushing India further into the alliance with the United States, with Australia, Japan, and other Western nations. So, one has to wonder what the strategic calculus of that has actually been because prior to that, India was a very slow and reluctant member of the Quad and that has changed 180 degrees since the Galwan Valley standoff that took place.
TM: There’s another aspect to it, which is just speculative, but China must be aware that if it did attack Taiwan, that’d be a very interesting time for India to actually decide it might want to pop back up across them, or not across, [but] into the parts of the Line of Actual Control which international laws say is theirs, because China would not want to be facing a war on two fronts. I mean, that’s just speculative on my behalf.
SG: But it’s an interesting notion.
TM: You mentioned Americans providing real time intelligence. India’s got lots of its own satellites, why does it need the Americans? I didn’t I wasn’t aware of this.
SG: Well, India has, to a degree, its own technology and ability to monitor, but it is not at the level of scale that the United States has.
TM: And the level of detail, the square metre detail, do they not have the same military
aspect?
SG: Yes, it’s not comparable. There have been these various bilateral agreements that India and the United States have signed that are meant to increase the defence cooperation, sharing of intelligence and you’re beginning to see the results of that. And another interesting dynamic is the fact that they are now engaging in training exercises, both countries’ militaries right on the border with China. So, you’re seeing a lot of things occurring now that were not necessarily present before. But to go back to one of the points you mentioned earlier, that doesn’t rule out a standoff in the Indian Ocean, because that is certainly another dynamic that we’re seeing, and again, you’re seeing the Quad nations improve their coordination, through their respective navies, so you’re seeing so many different dimensions coming into play.
TM: The Chinese fleet now is permanently in the Indian Ocean, I believe, part of it, obviously.
SG: Well, this has been a very important discussion, and I think it’s a good time to pause part one with Tim Marshall. Stay tuned for part two when we talk to Tim about his new book, The Future of Geography, How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World.
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This transcript has been edited for clarity.