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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   1331 thread views

Transnational Thursday for April 24, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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The rivers are already shut off for all intents and purposes. Pushing it further can set scary precedents in the sub-continent.

India could go upstream and cut off rivers at the source, but Pakistan's best friend (China) controls even more important rivers upstream. If China did a tit-for-tat than India would lose a lot more than they'd gain.

It's the main reason I consider Indian inaction to the Chinese annexation of Tibet to be the worst strategic misstep of a newly independent India. And for those who say 'India did not have the resources', Tibet is a defenders dream. All supply lines are cutoff for half the year. You can't lay siege, you can't set up shop, you can't invade. Well, I have enough reasons to dislike Nehru already. But here's one more.

In the months surrounding the People’s Liberation Army’s October 1950 entry into Tibet, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru read the same cable traffic yet drew radically different conclusions. Patel’s 7 November 1950 memorandum to Nehru warned that Tibet’s fall would erase the Himalayan buffer, expose India’s “almost undefended” northern flank, and reveal “China’s carefully laid plan to establish its domination” across Asia. Nehru, by contrast, saw the episode as unwelcome but unavoidable; he registered a formal protest, yet pressed ahead with recognizing the People’s Republic of China, advocating its U.N. seat, and negotiating the 1954 Panchsheel Agreement. Their divergent assessments shaped Indian policy for a decade and still frame today’s debate on how the annexation might have been answered differently. (sauce - O3 mini with search)

Ofc Patel was on the right side of history. Everything I read about him makes him seem like a 'Lee Kwan Yew' style pragmatic statesman that India needed. But ofc, Nehru chose naive optimism as he always did. Oh, how I wish the man had just gone to Cambridge and been a brown Francis Fukuyama instead.

Pakistan's best friend (China)

Why is China Pakistan's best friend? They oppress their own Muslims quite brutally, and generally have zero tolerance to any ideology that can compete with the Party. Do they just think they own Pakistan as a counterweight to India and a stepping stone to dominating Asia, and Pakistan is happy to be owned?

China is fine with nation-wise oppression of minorities. They have no issues with oppression of Muslims in China, Hindus in Pakistan or the Chinese in Malaysia.

Second, the Muslim identity is primarily an Arab identity. East-Asian and great-lake-African muslims are oppressed all the time, and global Islam does not care. (note: North African islam is not the same as Subsaharan islam). These are the Muslims that matter to other muslims.

Do they just think they own Pakistan as a counterweight to India

Yes. It's less friends, and more that Pakistan is a client state of China. Pakistan is Turtle to China's Vince.

and Pakistan is happy to be owned?

No, but what option do they (Pakistani Army) have ? IMF isn't giving new loans anymore. Even the Saudis stopped giving freebees. Big daddy China is all that's left. Anything to be in opposition to India.

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