The Indo-Soviet Treaty in 1971 [0], Soviet tech transfers to India starting in 1972 [1] that made India a semiconductor exporter to the Eastern Bloc [2] and become a mini-Taiwan before Taiwan [3], and support for India's military modernization initiative [4] under Indira Gandhi that surprised Western observers in the 1980s [5].
Finally, the NAM movement began fading from 1962 following the Sino-Indian war and died by the late 1970s with the US pivot to China [6]
Couldn't we say the US has a similar relationship with India now, at least before Trump II? We send them goodies to keep them friendly, but little geopolitical support that has significant consequence is exchanged. ?
For example, India didn't/doesn't permit military bases, if either the US or USSR wanted them. The US/USSR didn't cause an Indian victory against their neighbors (or did the Soviets have material effect on the Pakistan-Bangladesh split in 1971?).
No worries. This is my kvetching/random posting throwaway.
> Couldn't we say the US has a similar relationship with India now, at least before Trump II
Not to the same degree simply because
1. India's economy today has reached the same inflection point that the Chinese economy did in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
2. Middle Powers like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, France, and Israel have either caught up to or exceed American capacity in a number of critical technologies, and have begun mass scale capital and tech transfers to India
For 1,
India is essentially following the same trajectory as China, but 10-15 years behind because the economic isolation India faced from 1976-1991 along with the Warsaw Bloc's weakening economic heft lead to the 1990s era political and economic crisis.
India wasn't the only Soviet-leaning country that faced this issue. Even Vietnam - which used to have a HDI and GDP PPP per Capita well above the PRC until the late 1990s - suffered a lost decade for the same reasons India did due to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
For 2,
A major reason China took off in the 2000s was because Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese partners like TDK, Toshiba, Samsung, UMC, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, etc all began transferring IP related to energy, biotech, military hardware, semiconductors, automobiles, and other STEM industries to China via JVs. For example, BYD and CATL got their head starts in the 2000d thanks to Samsung and TDK respectively transferring battery chemistry IP to them in the 2000s.
Japanese, Taiwanese, South Korea, French, and Israeli firms all started similarly mass IP and capital transfers to Indian JVs from 2014 due to a mix of economic and geopolitical tensions with China along with the fact that India has become the last large greenfield economy that Chinese competitors cannot operate within.
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Because of 1 and 2, India has started exhibiting similar hallmarks to China back when I was observing them closely (and being ignored) in the late 2000s and early 2010s. In the Indian policymaking space, policies similar in scale and ambition to those that the PRC adopted in the early 2010s are being constantly enacted, and just like "China Shock" 15 years ago, an "India Shock" has started arising at least in IP heavy industries.
The fact that India is now spending around $205B on infra [0] (comparable to Chinese infra spend in the early 2010s), a combined [1] $30B [2] on semiconductor development (comparable in size to the Chinese Big Fund 1.0), $12B in government provided DeepTech VC funding [3] that is being matched dollar-for-dollar by private giants like Nvidia and Qualcomm [4], and similarly sized initiatives by the Japanese [5], Korean [6], Taiwanese [7], French [8], and Israeli [9] champions, and subsidizing electronic components [10] and rare earth [11] processing upskilling, enacting China-style labor reforms [12], and opening the entire Nuclear [13] and Electricity [14] sector to 100% private investment means a lot of capacity is in the process of being built out at the same scale as was in China during the early years of the Xi admin's "Make in China" initiative.
This is why I keep harping about India - even if a large portion of the funds are misallocated, they would still end up developing an ecosystem. The same thing happened with mismanagement of funds in the first iteration of "Make in China" but administrative capacity got better.
If we mismanage the India relationship, we may inadvertently end up making another ambivalent continental scale rival like China and Russia (yes they are in a recession and nowhere near as powerful as they were at their peak, yet they can enact severe pain nonetheless).
My biggest worry about India is that they'll ally, to some degree, with China. That may be pretty far out: I've never heard it discussed, they have some competing interests and some border disputes. But those are resolvable or manageable and with the Himalayas and two oceans between them, they can each safely operate in their own domain, for the most part, without really bothering the other.
With ~1/3 of the world population and those two economies, allied they might be unstoppable if the two nationalists can hold it together. Imagine a wide-ranging trade agreement and dominating the most strategic region in the world. And what could South Asian and SE Asian countries do but go along.
...
On another note, you've amazingly generated about 50 footnotes. I always prefer them and those are credible sources, but how do you crank this out? Do you just know what you're looking for and search nytimes.com or have an LLM find the articles? I'd love to find these things that quickly.
I'm usually the person in the conversation who knows the most about this history. It's been very interesting; thanks again.
> My biggest worry about India is that they'll ally, to some degree, with China
> But those are resolvable or manageable...
It won't happen unless China gives up claims on Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. The issue is China cannot because these are ethnic Tibetan regions.
Additionally, Paharis (a catch all term for the Indo-European speaking ethnic group that straddles the High Himalayas) are overrepresented in the Indian Armed Forces, and everyone in the community is 1-2 degrees separated from someone who was either impacted in one of the various Indo-China standoffs or knows people impacted by the Chinese invasion of Tibet. For a large portion of Paharis, the view on China is similar to how Poles view Russian aggression in Ukraine.
> but how do you crank this out? Do you just know what you're looking for and search nytimes.com or have an LLM find the articles
The former. I concentrated in Computer Science but got a secondary in Government primarily concentrating on an institutionalist approach to Asia and MidEast studies.
You remember that Watson quote in A Study in Scarlet about Sherlock Holmes' limited knowledge outside of a couple areas [0] - that's the same for me.
I cannot differentiate between Brad Pitt and Leonardo DeCaprio (I do watch movies and shows - I just don't know or care about the names of most actors), I don't know any song by Taylor Swift (I do listen to music, but I'm not the most knowledgeable of the latest trend), I have almost no knowledge of contemporary literature (I do read modern lit, but I'm usually 3-5 years behind the trend or zeitgeist), and I don't really follow sports aside from UFC (but I have been actively cross-training BJJ/Judo, Muay Thai/TKD, and trail running from grade school to yesterday). I also never read the news aside from a couple of primary and industry sources (eg. Reuters, Bloomberg Terminal, FT, The Economist, Axios, Politico (US and EU), TechCrunch, and a couple region specific sources) and constantly avoid narrative-based journalism (they are fun to read, but tend to waste time when trying to get to the point). I also don't use social media except hate-posting on HN or nerding out on Lobsters.
Basically, my equivalent of gossip and faux moi is the intersection of tech (I have another similarly in-depth throwaway for the technical niches I'm interested in), policy, and business.
> I'd love to find these things that quickly
If your actually interested in these topics and can afford it, I'd recommend doing a part-time masters at the Harvard Extension School in Government [1], the MLA program at Stanford [2], or the distance MA in War Studies at KCL [3].
Alternatively, intensely studying the reading list for a specific field (eg. The PPE required reading list for Balliol College, Oxford [4] or the CS tripos at Cambridge) builds the conceptual foundation needed to apply to a field.
Once you build the conceptual models and table stakes skills needed for a specific field, everything else falls into place.
Thanks for the suggestions. Reliably having time for scheduled classes is an obstacle. And there are so many things I value, I don't know if IR will make the top despite my obvious interest - and all that in addition to professional work and study. Maybe ancient Greek next (to read Homer, Socrates et. al., Greek theater in the original). Still, I'd love to learn IR fundamentals, as you say, and the Balliol reading list looks like a perfect opportunity.
I also cut everything I don't value especially - music (outside occasional jazz/classical concerts), sports, pop culture, social media, YouTube. I highly value arts but cut the time required to converse topically about them; few artists face our surreal current reality anyway. So I read literature or see film (the Criterion Channel could fill my time itself) or other arts of any provenance, in order to find the truly extraordinary and the next frontier for my mind. But even that leaves far too many options. I also began to create art myself (with no training, for a very intimate circle) - that has changed my life more than anything. That is something I highly recommend.
For exceptional IR articles you might see Just Security . Their core team is high-level IR attorneys (e.g., State Department, ICRC, etc.), and they don't hold back intellect or sophistication, though I can't talk about their a theoretical perspective. Their curated daily news brief is very useful.
Finally, the NAM movement began fading from 1962 following the Sino-Indian war and died by the late 1970s with the US pivot to China [6]
[0] - https://www.mea.gov.in/Portal/LegalTreatiesDoc/RU71B1557.pdf
[1] - https://www.mea.gov.in/Portal/LegalTreatiesDoc/RU72B1581.pdf
[2] - https://www.cpushack.com/2021/08/02/the-6502-travels-the-wor...
[3] - https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/economy/story/19831015-se...
[4] - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA089122.pdf
[5] - https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/06/world/on-india-s-border-a...
[6] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2757064