India-China Reset: 5 Years After Galwan, Is Thaw for Real? | In Our Defence S3 | Ep 19

Five years after the deadly Galwan Valley clash, India and China are suddenly warming up again. Flights are restarting, a Modi-Xi meeting is on the cards, and Beijing says that the setbacks of the past years were not in anybody's interests.

But is this thaw for real or just another chapter in the freeze-thaw cycle of India-China relations?

In this episode of In Our Defence, host Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan unpack:

- The Galwan clash and Operation Snow Leopard

- India's mountain warfare edge vs China's infrastructure push

- Why negotiations dragged on for 5 years

- What Beijing and Delhi each gain from a "thaw"

- The China angle during India's Operation Sindoor

- The Donald Trump factor and whether it's pushing India and China closer

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for

(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
This is in Our Defense.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Around five summers ago, soldiers from India and China, both
countries that are nuclear powered, got into a fight that
I can best describe as a good gou pub brawl. Sticks, stones,
barbed wires, iron nails.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
These are some of the.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Weapons that were used because of a long standing treaty
that both soldiers from both sides would not carry firearms
along the line of actual control, which is tested very
hotly in certain parts by India and China. Today, five
years since India and China sort of mending their ties,
flies between the two countries that had been suspended during

(01:10):
the COVID pandemic are set to resume. PMOD will be
visiting China later this year for the SEO Samit very
expected to meeting.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
UH.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Coincidence as this happens while India sees a rough patch
in its ties with the US, maybe maybe not to
decode this and more we have How are you good?

Speaker 3 (01:31):
They're good to be back. What are we talking about today? China? China, Chinina, China.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Actually something you know has been a very big focus
area during the first two seasons of another defense because
of the standoff and because of I think something that
experts like you, retired military officers, have long long want
that the Indian government, no matter who's in power, should
turn their focus away from Pakistan and look at China.

(02:00):
That happened in the last five was actually the Indian
military made a decisive change to its sort of operational capabilities,
its readiness to to to take on China. I mean,
sind did happen then they will discuss that as well.
But the shift towards China has happened in the in
the last five years.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
UH.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
And during the school period there was a lot of
negotiation that happened between the two sides, between military commanders,
between diplomats UH. And finally we're sort of sort of
seeing a thaw. So I don't think what I said
that at the beginning really holds. Uh, is really that
true when I say that it's a coin, It's not
a coincidence. It's happening, happening when you have your ties
with Washington, sort of a bit frost team. But I

(02:43):
think that has sort of played as the accellerant to
what had been happening for the last last couple of
years before we get to where we are today and
the big question of whether India can truly trust China.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Ever, again, let's go back to five years ago.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Let's go back to that Galban Valley class the deadly
is fighting in the two countries.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Since since we fought those.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
That war, Uh, twenty soldiers, including one commanding officer, died.
China has formally acknowledged four or five deaths. Estimates are
far far higher. I described the brutal fighting. You had
rods wrapped with barbed wire, you had stones being thrown,
punches flying, that sort of as we call it.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
That happened within two sites. Uh.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
What was your first reaction when you heard about specifically
the Galman Valley clash, Because the stand up actually had
begun a couple of months before, and the clash itself
was the result of an Indian unit going to verify
that Chinese had pulled back from a particular post that
they had said they would, but that did not happen,
and then the fight happened, and you we know what happened.

(03:49):
So your first reaction to that that that day, that
the day of the fight. And second, the larger question
which I still have not been able to get an
answer to, why did China.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Do this in the first place. Well, they've you know,
my first reaction to that was Oscar Mike Golf, Oh
my god. You know, they finally did it. And you know,
this has been a certain pattern. And you know, as
you said that, and many Indian strategists have said that,
including Barad Karnat, that you know, we were faced with

(04:22):
a two front crisis for at least six decades now
ever since the nineteen sixty two war. Now we had
the choice of focusing on the big threat primarily that
will leave us a lot of spare capacity to face
the lesser threat, which is Pakistan. But we chose to
do the exact opposite. We focused entirely on the smaller threat,

(04:42):
which is Pakistan, and that actually took a lot of
energy away diverted a lot of focus away from the
bigger threat, which was China. Now you have a few,
you know, far sighted individuals like George Fernandez, the Defense minister,
who's a China as enemy number one. There were few
voices within the strategic community that did see China coming

(05:04):
as the major, big threat. But you know, typically these
are people who looked in the long term horizon twenty years,
thirty years from now, so they always painted China as
the main threat. And in fact, our nuclear weapons program,
which is I mean literally the core of our strategic independence,
is in response to a Chinese threat. The beginning of it,

(05:25):
at least in the nineteen sixties, as we discussed in
one of your episodes, it wasn't so much on Pakistan.
The accelerant year was Pakistan right in the eighties. But
the fact is that the strategic establishment, the political establishment,
understood China as the major threat. But for various reasons

(05:46):
Pakistan's you know, state sponsorship of terror, nuclear weapons and
all that, we chose to focus on the smaller threat,
which was Pakistan. But somewhere in the twenty tens, twenty twelve,
you know, the government of the day had all he
started putting a lot of things in progress. You know,
they had started pushing a lot of border infrastructure. There

(06:06):
was a lot of awareness in the military about the
fact that at the rate of infrastructure built by the Chinese,
especially along the Lac, it would be only a matter
of time before they would present us with a clear
and present kind of you know danger. And in fact,
years one of my friends in the strategic community had
gone so far as to predict to me somewhere in

(06:28):
about twenty fifteen or sixteen, almost a decade ago. He said, look,
and he analyzed it very clinically. He said, China has
begun its military modernization. They will end that modernization somewhere
in the mid twenty twenties, which is a decade from now,
and he said, at that point, China will test us
along the border. He was very clear in that because

(06:49):
it was his job to, you know, look at the
future and look at the trajectory of where the two
militaries were headed. And he predicted that. Now the Chinese
seemed to have advanced that prediction by a couple of years, right,
instead of you know, twenty twenty five, late twenty twenties,
they came to about to zero to zero, and that
was around the time of COVID. Now we don't still

(07:13):
know why the Chinese did what they did, which was
to mobilize in force, but the understanding is that at
every level of the Indian government is that this could
not have happened without Chijin Ping signing off on it,
right because the relationship that he had built with Prime
Minister Moody that kind of warm, you know, the exchanges

(07:36):
that they had, they had those one on one summits
in first in China then in India. All of that
seemed to suggest that this kind of thing could not
have happened but for Xi Jinping's explicit approval. And that
possibly has to do with the way we reacted in
Dokla very strongly, and they were taken aback and they

(08:00):
decided to prepare and kind of you know, the so
called teach them a lesson, slap them once. So that
is where we saw from Doklam what happened in twenty
sixteen right down to do Klum is twenty seventy seventy
and three years later. What they did was they went
about it very methodically. They first started this elaborate high

(08:20):
altitude exercises. They started doing those quite often in the
Tibetan plateau, so that we would not we would be
kind of lulled into a sense of complacency that every
year the Chinese come, they do their exercises, and they
moved back. They did that in eighteen, they did that
in nineteen, they did it in twenty twenty, and just
around the time that you thought that they were supposed

(08:41):
to go back because they were doing this every year,
they stayed and they backstopped their aggression along the border.
So this was not so much you know, military, a
military invasion or preparation for an invasion, because if you
saw that disposition of those vehicles and the forms, the
two motorized divisions that they brought there opposite our forces

(09:04):
in Laddak, it was very clearly meant to flex muscles, right,
you know that that was military muscle flexing. Uh, it
was saber rattling, whatever you call it. Right. They were
trying to tell us that, look, this is going to
be the new normal. Right. And this again came down
from the highest level, and it was China basically telling
India who's boss. And I'm not sure if they planned

(09:28):
doklm right down to the weight unfolded Galwan. My mistake.
They didn't. They didn't plan Galwan the weight unfolded. This
possibly seems to indicate the skirmishing and all that seems
to indicate something at the ground level, while the larger
mobilization of Chinese forces along the LAC, especially at Ladakh,

(09:51):
seemed to indicate very high level Chinese approval, possibly from
Chi Jinping, who's the most powerful Chinese leader as we
know today since Mao Zedom right, or possibly even Deng Jopping.
But then even Deng did not have the kind of
sweeping control that Hi Jinping has. He controls everything. He's
like the lord of everything, you know, the Party, the

(10:13):
Central Military Commission, the country, everything, he controls everything like
he's a totalitarian. He's a dictator, he's a despot. So
this was carried out at his explicit orders. But I
think the Chinese also were taken aback by the way
we responded. We lost soldiers. They lost soldiers as well.
But the way we responded we said, this is not

(10:37):
all right, and it is up to China has ripped
up something like three decades of peace and tranquility agreements.
They were very very explicit border agreements that said right
down to how you are going to carry a rifle
when you're patrolling along the LAC. The agreements say that

(10:57):
I've read those agreements. That agreements say that you can
carry rifles in your hand. The rifle barrel cannot be
pointing up. It has to be worn behind your back,
the rifle barrel pointing down. So it was that explicit.
They wanted to ensure that there was no there was
no standoff, nothing that could escalate quickly, you know. But
the thing is that by twenty twenty, you also have

(11:20):
to see how China's border infrastructure had developed. They had
the ability now to move divisions very quickly to the LAC.
And this was a capability, this was a capacity that
they didn't have in nineteen sixty two. They had to
actually build roads, special roads literally, you know, they're to work,
and they worked like you know ants, and they built

(11:41):
those roads through nineteen sixty two, and then they finally
came in and they launched that attack against us. But
in twenty twenty, they had already reached a level of
border infrastructure. And if you study experts who've analyzed the
Chinese very closely. They said, this is the pattern to
China's aggression with all its neighbors. They're very peaceful, and

(12:01):
they're very quiet, and they're very well behaved when there's
no infrastructure. When they start building up that border infrastructure,
their attitude and their behavior changes. Once they've developed all
that infrastructure, they'd come on the border. They flexed their muscles,
and they've done that with all most of their smaller neighbors.

(12:22):
They tried that with the Soviets as well. They got
a bloody nose in the Usuri River clashes, and then
of course they settled the border agreement. But here with
US as well, I think they got the same kind
of surprise. We might have been initially surprised by the
Chinese in twenty twenty, but then we didn't all of
government approach with the Chinese in terms of cracking down

(12:43):
on trade. You know, we banned the Chinese apps. We
ensured that they didn't have the kind of penetration of
the Indian markets, especially in the sensitive sectors that they
once did, especially telecom in all of those areas Huai
and all that those became you know, absolutely forbidden words

(13:03):
in the Indian government. So I think that took the
Chinese a bit by surprise. Now, I mean, China and
India have huge bilateral trade. It's still over one hundred
billion dollars, right, and it's heavily stilted in favor of China, yes,
like it's one of the largest trade deficits that one
country enjoys over the other. Right. Over ninety billion dollars

(13:23):
worth of goods is what we buy from the Chinese.
They buy very little from us in comparison. Now, all
that continues, but we have managed to fire wall certain
sectors away from the Chinese, and this is what has
caused them a lot of discomfort. Right at the end
of the day, they it's all about the money, yes, right,

(13:45):
it is the economy stupid, as they see now in
China also in the last couple of years they've been
going through a great churn. Make no mistake about it,
the Chinese achievements have been spectacular. There has been no
country in in the history of the world, probably since
the post World War that has advanced as rapidly as

(14:06):
China has today. It's what a twenty trillion dollar economy,
almost second early to the United States, which is about
what thirty trillions. The Chinese are today a manufacturing superpower
end to end, from inger to finished product. They do
everything right, which is why this combination of Russia and
China should worry the West. It does worry them. A

(14:29):
lot of clever people look at it and say, what
did you do to combine to make an alliance of
a Russo superpower like the Russian Federation and a manufacturing
superpar like China. Right, You've brought them together, and I'm
sure those experts are still asking today, what did you
do to make sure that India went running to China

(14:50):
and Russia to make that ric Russia, India, China and
exists what the West has feared come true. That's Trump's
biggest achievement. As one of the Chinese scholars. I was
just listening to what he told Guita Moon on the
India Today Show that you know, Trump is the best

(15:13):
gift that China could ever have asked for. Right. They're
pushing countries closer to China. And you know, while the
China India approachment is not an overnight decision, it's been
in the works for several months, as you said, so
it's been there at least since last year. We know,
from September absolutely September October War Kazan and then on

(15:37):
there was a thaw in the ties. In October you
had the troops you know, walking back from Depsan and
dem Chalk, which are the two flashpoints from the twenty
twenty standoff. But it was a slow process. But I
think what Trump has done now has has just said,
accelerated the process. So there are those little events in

(15:58):
India's things were an elephant. You know. While we like
to see ourselves as other, you know, animals, I think
we are like elephants. We move a little slowly, and
once in a while there is that one little thing,
that impetus that forces us to go move, you know, rapidly,
and usually it's a wake up call. Nineteen ninety one
economic reforms, My god, we have to pledge our goal,

(16:21):
you know, oh god, open up the economies. Twenty twenty,
Oh my god. You know, Pakistan is not the threat,
China the threat. Oh you we're doing that, but yeah, yes,
So it's like, you know, it's impetus. So while you
were building on the border infrastructure, you're militarizing doing all
of that. Post twenty twenty that has accelerated. And the
same thing here with the United States as well. Oh,

(16:41):
we've got a great relationship with Trump and oh my god,
you know what's Trump doing? You know, maybe we need
to engage with the Chinese a little more. So it's
accelerated the process. These things have been in the pipeline
for a while, so, I mean the I'm just looking
at the Western media and they saying, oh, Trump is
forcing India to wards China. No, not really, We were

(17:02):
anyway going towards the Chinese and this was a slow process.
It's just the timing of all of these events. Right,
Trump doing what he does best, you know, forcing countries
to come together, acting like a pirate literally the way
the United States has been behaving. Eight weeks of piracy
of the days of the eighteenth century and all that

(17:23):
might is right and all of that, you know, shaking
up even countries like the UK and Canada and Mexico, Vietnam.
If no one's safe and neither are we.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, it's like one of my colleagues headlined one of
his pieces today, Right, Trump has done that, brick by brick.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Brick by brick. Yeah, which is the big thing as well,
The big worry for the West as well, you know,
of the world to you know, combine together and who
knows talk about deed augorization and all currency new currency.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yes, right, one more a quick curse and small point
on the Gulvant clash before we sort of zoom out
for the larger picture.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
When a class like that happens, uh, when twenty soldiers
have died, including a commanding officer, which for soldiers in
India is like they treat commanding offices as the father
of the unit. So it's in fact it was actually
I think what the reporting says is that it was
the first stone that was thrown that hit colonel who
fell to the river, and that is what that is

(18:24):
what of the troops, and that's just what what triggered
the fighting. Uh So regardless of whether China planned this
or not. Because there's also some reporting that the unit
that the Indians were up against was brought in just
a day before, so they and others knew the older unit,
but that had been chanted out and a fresh one
had been brought in, so there was no wrappo between

(18:45):
them as such, that could also have played a role
in the in this in this in this fight, but
when a class like this happens, obviously your tempers are
super high.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
And these are not normal men. These are men trained
to fight, and men trained with this one single concept,
which is an eye for an eye. That's how it
works in the world of military.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
So when that phone went up right to the PMO,
I'm guessing something must have similarly gone up the chains
in China as well. What do you think must it
have taken to ensure that no more blood is split
on the ground, especially the tactical level, Because while the
army chief sitting in Delhi can calmly tell his commander
KBrO come down, but the tactical level, the ground level,

(19:27):
the next in command, he would be furious.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
How do you stop that from absolutely and a good question.
And you know this is where you know, I for one,
actually thought there was going to be an escalated military clash,
you know, given how quickly things had spiral out of control.
Soldiers had died, twenty soldiers, commanding officer killed and of
course a lot of lives lost on the Chinese side

(19:52):
as well. There was a lot of anger, I know
at the field level there, especially in the Northern Command.
The fourteen cores, which was, you know, whose area of
responsibility this occurred in. There was a lot of anger
there and they wanted to retaliate. They wanted to do
what Sagat Singh General Sagatsingh did in nineteen sixty seven,

(20:12):
which was to launch an artillery barrage and all of that.
But I think at some level, you know, cooler heads
prevailed and they said, look, maybe you know, if this happens,
then things are going to go out of control and
you are going to have the second India China War war.
Perhaps it wouldn't have ended at that if I'm guessing
that if there had been an artillery barrage from our side,

(20:34):
they would have been one from the Chinese side as well,
and you would have been talking about a lot more casualties.
This is not to say we shouldn't have done that
or anything like that, but I think whatever decisions were
made at that point were the right decisions in hindsight,
and we allowed the situation to come down to stabilize

(20:55):
and then to slowly seek a disengagement. And of course
demilitarization has not happened because all of those soldiers who
were pumped in in both sides on our side and
theirs as well continue to remain in the theater of operations.
So I think it is tougher for the Chinese to
acclimatize than it is for us. Yes, we've been fighting
on the mountains for six decades or so, you knowch

(21:19):
And deployments nineteen thousand feet And I have several friends, classmates,
former classmates who you know, routinely do sich And deployments,
and what they tell me is absolutely horrifying the kind
of conditions that you have to live in. But the
Indian Army does this because the Indian Army is, like
I believe, unlike any other army on Earth, which fights

(21:40):
at such you know, altitudes, because the government has deemed
those positions in the national to be in the national interest.
The Chinese are finding it very hard to acclimatize. They've
never been deployed at such super high altitudes. In fact,
no two militaries in the history of warfare in all
of recorded history have been deployed at such high altitudes

(22:02):
that super high altitude, like over fifteen thousand feet. Tanks
have been deployed at these altitudes where you know, you
don't normally see tanks at fourteen and fifteen thousand feet,
and here you're seeing entire regiments of them. There's talk
of you know, armored warfare at high altitude and super
high altitude and all. But that's where the thing is,
and you know, it's part of a largest strategy of

(22:23):
containing China, which is basically, you know, deter China, engage China,
and compete with China. So it's it's a military is
only one part of it. There is a whole overall
national grand strategy at play here which has been playing
out since the Galwan twenty twenty over the last five years,
and we're seeing it come to fruition. We will see

(22:44):
many more such high level you know, summit meetings and
all that before a new normal can be established with China.
But given the thing there is that what happened in
Do Klam and then what happened in Galwan, it kind
of breached trust between the two countries. So you were
used to seeing all of this as you know, nothing's

(23:07):
going to happen. There is a peace and trime quality
agreement on the border that's going to hold for all
time to come. But that clearly was not the idea
that somebody on the other side decided to breach that
or tests are you know, red lines, it flexes muscles.
We completely discounted the possibility of that ever happening while
there were exercises on our side, military exercises, what if

(23:31):
the Chinese come in, you know, large formations, divisions cover
how to handle it, military exercises have that kind of thing.
But these were not done with the presumption that this
is going to be there. It is going to be
a reality, and it is a reality now. And yeah,
we are twenty twenty five. We're facing the Chinese off
across the Lac on multiple points across the Lac, but

(23:51):
from a greater distance than we were five years ago. Yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
I was zooming out a bit to talk about the
last five years and what India has done militarily, not
as much strategically, because that's something that we'll get to
in a bit. And also sort of take your point
forward about you know, India being better at mountain warfare company.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
To the Chinese.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Were the Chinese sort of taken aback by how India
was able to stand up to it along the LC
operations just snow Leopard, where what we've learned from reporting
is that in a surprise move sort of India occupied
certain peaks that gave it access and direct line of
sight to certain Chinese units that became suddenly very vuluable

(24:36):
and they realized, you, oh, we need to sort of
pull back from where we are otherwise you know whatever.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
And in fact, an interesting nugget, I think the Special
Frontier Force, a very highly secretive unit, was involved in
operations now Lefward. And this was one of those rare
instances where the Indian government formally acknowledged the presence of SSF.
One of the one of the soldiers was given some
sort of thing. It was it was mentioned dispatches.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Honor died in a mind blast.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, yes, yes, so anyway, so that was that was
at the very beginning. That was at the very very beginning.
But over the last five years India deployment along the LC,
sure there were some shortcomings. You suddenly realized, oh, my god,
you have guns, so I have to go to the
US to buy rifles. You didn't have like, you know, tents,
you didn't have winter clothing and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
You had been but not in the numbers that you
needed because you. I think you had about fifty thousand troops.
You had had some three cours there, three courses a lot.
It's almost a field arm there.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
That was so that happened, But the overall over the
last five years that India was able to you know,
sort of look China in the Ie retake. So I'm
pretty sure China must have had some advantages somewhere, but
India then managed to go somewhere else and to pick
its own advantage. So that game of chess that was playing.
Do you think China was a bit taken about was
able to do that in the first place.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
I think they were, and they must have underestimated our
ability to surge troops so rapidly and to hold them
in the theater and continue building them up. I think
that that rattled them and they weren't expecting this. They
thought it'd be like a you know, like in the
past we've seen border standoffs in depsung or damn chalk

(26:12):
and you know all of that. They come, they muscle,
and then they go back. But here we realized that
these numbers were very unusual that they brought in, So
we also mirrored that deployment. And I think that took
them a bit by surprise, and the fact that we
pushed in more soldiers, we moved you know, troops from
other sectors, We climatized them, moved them up, you know.

(26:35):
Like I mentioned, at one point there were like three
core commanders over there for a brief while, and so
there was command in control was going to be a
big issue, like you know, because the three cores there,
there was there was one strike core that had been
moved up there, there was the existing core, and that'd
be in the third you know, elements of a third
core that had been moved up. So it was like

(26:55):
a lot of soldiers there. And I think that the
Chinese quite a bit, and this I think would be
one of their asks of India, you know, when if
there are talks as they are now, is that one is, hey, listen,
don't go don't go close to the US, too close
to them and try and you know, gang up with

(27:17):
the United States against US. And another thing, of course
would be that, uh, don't allow border tensions like this
to spill out of control and don't react this way,
you know, that kind of thing. I think that is
the sense that I'm getting that rattled them quite a bit, uh,
and they weren't expecting all of these differences that we
have on on on the border to you know, get

(27:40):
enter trade and all other aspects of things. You know
that we basically shut the Chinese out for four years
and now things have kind of been starting to improve
as of last year once they did show their intent
to normalize the relationship by going back from them sung
them choc and that's when we kind of started slowly normalizing. Now,
flight direct lights have resumed, there's visas are going to

(28:03):
be given out. Mansaroba Riyatras have started their stock of
a trade relationship resuming as well. Investments from China. A
lot of big, big ticket investments were held up, like
you know bid and all of those they wanted to
build cars in India. A very big one billion dollar
you know, uh investment proposal was rejected and all of that.

(28:27):
So China really needs India's market, right, We of course
need the Chinese investment. They have a lot of spare cash,
they have a lot of technology which we need. But
that's going to be conditional on a lot of things.
Good behavior, market access will be conditional on you know,
keeping the border peaceful, uh not militarizing, and of course

(28:50):
there is another element I'm sure which you're going to
talk about, which is the dumb truck filled with weapons,
nice weapons of mass destruction. And that's a that's a
big dumb truck in the room. Is Brunes definitely right.
We'll talk more about this. But after a quick break.

Speaker 5 (29:15):
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Speaker 3 (29:58):
Welcome back.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
You know something before break you mentioned about how China
wants India's market and US once India's market. Yeah, I
was just thinking, like, so much for us being a
dead economy, right with everyone wanting access.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
To a market.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah, right, So on the point of China, So we've
talked about what's happened, what happened in Galwan. That was
that one flashpoint and that just made headlines. I mean,
the larger issue was obviously much much larger. I remember
that many defense journalists people like you, consistently kept saying
that people in mainland India don't realize how fragile situation

(30:35):
was at certain points, and it was it was like
a warlike situation when you say a war like situation,
and that's something that was reflected I think even in
several Army chief statements, military chiefs anyone statements that you know,
things are stable, but their fragile things are stable with theirs.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
That was the comment for the longest time. It had,
you know, troups moving around with the first line ammunition.
And I've seen them myself. I mean the trip that
I made too shortly after Galvan to Ladak was very
eye opening. And you know, I saw a lot of
soldiers there, and you know, I was talking to one

(31:12):
of the commanders there and he said, you know, this
is something the Indian Army does really well, which is
to flood an area with soldiers so many of them.
So it's like you know earlier where you had battalions,
you had brigades, and where you had brigades, you had divisions,
and where you had divisions, you had courts. So the
whole place was flooded with the military and the Indian
Army was all over there, and I think that was

(31:34):
something that we did very quickly. My father was there instantly.
A couple of years back. He had gone there on
a touristing and next servicemen. So he traveled there, and
he'd gone there when he was much younger, and he
came back. He went to base camps and he came
back like, my god, the soldiers everywhere. It's like, you know,

(31:55):
I've come into like the middle of a World war
or something. He says that, you know, air bases were activated,
there were soldiers, there were convoys going up and down.
And I said, what do you expect. That's twenty twenty one,
right literally at the peak of the standard. But you know,
that's where things have really changed. And of course our
infrastructure burst of construction that we've seen in the last

(32:15):
ten years decade or so. I mean, that's relentless, the
pace of it. You have to see to believe. Literally
roads coming up where there was nothing there. I mean,
I've I did the before and the after. I went
to Ladak in the first time I went there, pangong
So and looking at those infrastructure that we'd built twenty
twelve subsector not those those areas they were all deserts,

(32:39):
like high altitude deserts. You had to have a you know,
four x four to drive through there, and today you
have roads all of those places. And that's one of
those areas that you had that very interesting Operation snow Leopard. Yeah,
they used Brigade plus Special Forces. It was like you mentioned,
SFF was you know, publicly acknowledged for the first time

(33:01):
by the government of India, basically telling the Chinese that look, there,
there are a lot of these capabilities that we have
that we would push in if you if push comes
to shove. So they do special forces movements and you
know high ALTERNATEDE deployments which still are not declassified. So
once in a while you will see your slip from

(33:22):
the Defense Ministry, from the army where they will put
out the uh they will read out the citations of
officers and then that those citations and the videos will
vanish when they realize, oh my god, we shouldn't be
talking about all of this now. So one of the
former chiefs did try to write his memoirs, yes, and
he's having a hard time publish, getting it, yeah, published,
because I mean I see where the government is coming from.

(33:44):
Because see anything in a live border situation where you're
still negotiating border thing, true, you don't want your accounts
or your reports or your thing to be weaponized by
the other side. Because we're a democracy, everybody right says
what they want to the opposite side, they're not, so

(34:06):
they will thrive on the information that you provide them.
I mean, look at how clinically we provided the lists
of our brave soldiers who died in Galwan very quickly,
within hours. In fact, we knew the name of the
commanding officer, the village that he was, from, his next
of everything, all the twenty soldiers, their names, rank, serial number,

(34:28):
everything was out in the public domain. But from the
Chinese side nothing. Yeah. So that this is the you know,
the two different systems that you're literally talking about. So
that's one of the reasons that you're not being able
to get a very accurate analysis of what really went
on in Galvan. So, I mean, that's still dark territory.

(34:50):
You know, people are not clear to talk about. We
know it. We know a lot of what actually happened
then five years back, but a lot of it is
on background. Yes, right, we still don't have the d classified.
I mean, the Henderson Brooks Report hasn't been beclassified. That's
been over six decades, and that is partly because of
this that there are certain segments in that which the

(35:11):
government feels we will give your adversary another position and
we'll say, look your report, say so and so. But
you know, I say that as a mature democracy, it's
time to release that report. Redact portions of it. Look
through portions of which could be used today in the
Henderson Brooks Report, blank out those portions and say these

(35:35):
parts have been redacted. They will be released only fifty
years hence or whatever. But release the large parts of
the thing. I mean, that's how mature democracy should be,
I guess at some point. But I don't think anyone
wants to build the cat just yet. You take the
responsibility for what follows. But that's you know, India, China
for you, and you know the bigger thing with China, Davis.

(35:55):
You know we've discussed this on your show before, is
that we've never done with a superpower on our borders.
I think the last Indian kingdom or empire that did
that was the Sikh Empire mahajar anjiitsin that looked at
the East India Company on their borders and they realized,

(36:18):
my god, these guys have captured so much territory that
sooner or later they're going to come for us. So
I'm just thinking that maybe it's nearly two centuries since
we faced a threat like this, A big manufacturing power
house which is not just an economic powerhouse, but it's
a military powerhouse as well, which aims to be a

(36:40):
peer competitor of the United States and at some point
displaced the United States as well in world of face.
So we have that country on our border, on the
LAC and I don't know how many of us actually
realize how significant a threat that is. Right, this big,
huge superpower or potential superpower. I should say, they're not

(37:05):
a superpower yet they want to be. They're getting there economically,
they are a superpower. Militarily, they're close to being a
near peer competitor to the United States. But to have
a country like this on our borders, that's going to
impose a lot of costs, and that is actually going
to decide the trajectory of everything that we do from

(37:26):
you know, here on, And I would say twenty twenty
would be the cutoff day for that, you know, Like
we have nineteen ninety one as the the year that
India took a decision to liberalize the economy. Twenty twenty
would be the year that we decided to become a
more self sufficient focus on the threat, which is China,

(37:47):
but at the same time not allow your threat of
China to overpower you in all other aspects, you know,
Like like I said, you know, deter them, militarily, engage
with them, diplomatically, compete with them economically. So this strategy,
it's a very complicated strategy. It's like, you know, we're
very comfortable with what I call those the dushmini kind

(38:09):
of study. You know, either you're with me or you're
against me. But this is a strange kind of world
that we've not been used to, that frenemies concept. Yes,
where you're looking at the Chinese, you see their battle
tanks on the LAC and the Indian commander will be
looking at the Chinese tanks and wondering are these tanks
made from the ore that came from Indian minds. Yeah,

(38:32):
that could well be the possibility. Right. So this is
a kind of complicated complex geopolitics that you're looking at
when it comes to China. Again, this is something we've
never handled before. We had a bit of a cold
war with the United States. We are never buying anything
very major from them, certainly not military equipment. Now we
realize the well the we're questioning the wisdom of some

(38:56):
of those big deals that we did over the last
couple of years. But China presents a threat which is
something that we've never faced. And I think it's important
for us as a mature country, as a vibrant democracy,
and a country that's soon to be the third largest economy.

(39:16):
We have to handle this. We have to handle Pakistan,
we have to handle China as well. And Donald Trump
and the United States and you know, very quickly they've
many years back, fifteen years back to be precise. The
Australian defense minister that come here down to Delhi, Stephen Smith,
I still remember him, and he sat and we had
a small closed door meeting with him, few journalists. So

(39:37):
we said, so, mister Smith, what brings you to New Delhi?
So we said, well, how I see it, there are
only three important relationships in the future. It's the India
China relationship. It's the China US relationship, and it's the
US India relationship. Well into the middle of the twenty
first century, these are the only three big relationships that

(39:58):
will matter are here to try and you know, make
the best of this situation. So they're already very big
with I mean they are a US ally, they were
very big with China. They were supplying a lot of
there are a lot of exports to China, and of
course they want to do The Australia India relationship is
where it is today fifteen years of twenty years of

(40:19):
you know, constant building up and stuff like that. So,
I mean, these are the three very big relationships of
the twenty that will actually define the twenty first century.
So you'll have one of president coming and s Yeah,
it's a dead economy and all that. No, it's not
a dead economy. It is a big economy. It may
not be China just yet, yes, but give us some time.
We'll get there, get there, right.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
So what's happened in the last year or so, especially
in the last few months, is something that the way
I see it, it is China that's been the one
making the sort of overtures diplomatic tectomics.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
I'll just debeat that.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
The way I see this, China that is the one
that's made all the overtures to you. Very recently, you
had China making a very nice friendly statement on India's
behalf when you were important impost tariffs.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
On on on on India.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Wangi when he was in India just a couple of
days ago, he began his I think it was the
meeting with Ada, if I'm not wrong, where he began
by saying that what's the setbacks of the last few
year I'm paraphrasing him where he basically said the setbacks
of the last few years, I'm not in anybody's interests,
which I found a very interesting comment for him to

(41:32):
make because basically he was saying, but you know, we're
realizing probably.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
We're a good dragon now good dragon. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
So what I'm trying to understand sleep is again this
is also linked to my first question itself, like what
does or what did China end up getting out of
all of this, because you know, like I don't believe
Raandhi to the to the extent that he says that
China has you know, taken x y z square kilometers
of India's land. But my belief also is that China

(42:04):
doesn't really have any tactical interest in getting land because
people who will see the population map of China will
realize that western.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
China is very sparsely populated.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
A majority ninety percent of his population is actually on
the eastern coast where the country China actually is there
and not really along the rac with India, so there's
no reason for it to need extra land there. It's
a barren space of land anyway. So by doing what
it did in twenty twenty and now sort of coming
back to the negotiating table having this you know, friendly

(42:35):
ties with India sub Mila cap.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
It's a good question there. One word for that. One
word answer, leverage. So you know, till the time you
don't have some leverage, you don't have skin in the game.
I think that's what the Chinese have realized, that they
want to build in all these livers so that they
can pressurize India when they want to. Right now in
twenty twenty, one of the other things waving on their

(42:59):
mind is they possibly saw us swinging too close to
the United States, and they did what they did at
that time. They say that, oh, you're big with the
United States, the cord and your joint exercises. I'll show
you on the border. So that kind of thing China
and Pakistan, that's also part of that whole thing of

(43:20):
leverage to ensure that I've said this before about firewalling
India into South Asia, to ensure that India never grows
and becomes a threat to China. Even now, I'm sure
this must be on their mind, they must be weighing
on their minds that, look, we have to be nice
to the Indians twenty twenty five. We have to invest

(43:41):
over there, build factories, technologies, you know, grind our teeth
and do what they ask us to maybe in these areas,
but we have to ensure in the long term, in
the twenty forties and fifties, they don't become a threat
to us the way we became for the United States. Right.
So the are countries they that play the long game.

(44:03):
We've started doing that only recently. When you're looking at
goals that twenty forty seven, twenty thirty five, you know,
those kind of goals were never set before. The Chinese
have always been doing that. And when this person who's
never got the kind of credit that he's given for
Dung Jaoping, he's actually the father of modern China. Everyone
looks at China and they think Mao Zedong Mao was

(44:25):
a tyrant, He was an idiot, right, he killed the
maximum number of Chinese. But for him it was okay.
You know, China had to become a great nation, you know,
even on the backs of forty or fifty million dead Chinese.
So Dung was the father of modern China. And his
one of his most famous sayings is that hide your strength,

(44:46):
bide your time, right, he said, Look, nineteen eighties, let's
start our process of economic liberalization, modernization, take a lot
of technology from the United States. Carry out what I
call one of the biggest deceptions of the twenty year century,
which is the Chinese telling the United States, you know,
if you invest in US, you pump in a lot

(45:07):
of investments technology, open your factories over here, we're going
to become rich, and we're going to become liberal, and
we're going to become more democratic, you know, And that
I think was the biggest deception China today is richer
than they've ever been in recent history, but they're more
autocratic than it they've ever been in the past. So

(45:27):
that's the big deception. And the US got played. And
you see the writings that have come out from the
United States in the last couple of years from their
geopolitical guys and thinkers and all this. Hey, guys, we
got played. We thought you guys are going to be
democracies and you know you're going to have McDonald's and
we can all like, you know, we can control you guys.
But lo and behold. No country seems to be playing

(45:50):
to that. And I think that's the reason why ric
should worry the United States in the near term, at
least Russia, India and China. And of course this is
not discounting and I always say that, never discount our
relationship with the United States. It is too big, it
is too important, and it is there are biggest trading partner.

(46:11):
They're simply too big to ignore. We have to draw
our red lines and we have to tell them that look,
this is not how you do it, and we have
to keep calm and carry on by the time. Basically,
bind your strength, hide your bind your time, hide your strength,
and that's what the Chinese. How the Chinese did it,
and I think that's the way that we should also
be playing. And I think we're doing a good job

(46:33):
of it so far. I think we should play it,
but not go easy on economic liberalization and go to sleep,
and you know, make so hard for your Indian businessmen
to do business. I was just looking at some stats recently.
How many permissions it takes for a still Chinese exporter
to send out a container out of China? Right? A

(46:56):
container brings money for an exchange too. Permisions in India
two forms, you just have to fill two forms. In
India it's twelve forms, and even that would be like insufficient.
I'm sure that we got to that ten or twelve
forms after Great Reform exactly ease of doing business. So
we have to compete with the Chinese. There's no two
ways about it, because I mean it's now or never.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yeah, right, So the elephant in the room, or should
I say the dumpster in the room.

Speaker 3 (47:25):
The dump truck filled with weapons of mass destruction. Yeah,
it's a fact.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
So you had China backing Pakistan militarily during this is
again on background, This is the India military's post operations
and there analysis for what have they've done. We don't
know exactly how, but I think in form of certain
helping them with some radar information, with some sort of everything.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
Yeah, I mean, in short, China was to Pakistan what
NATO was to Ukraine. Yeah, in in that short span
of four days or so, I mean, a lot of
geospecial intelligence went to them. They were using Chinese networks
and of course the hardware the missiles. But must add
all the Chinese missiles, all the hardware, all the submarines,

(48:15):
all the armored cars, all the tanks could not prevent
what happened on the tenth of me that barrage of missiles.
Your air defense radars will hold, your anti missile missiles
were taken down, Your fighter jets could not fly, your
airfields were destroyed, all of that despite all the Chinese hardware.

(48:36):
So I mean the thing is that, look, we should
have known this all along. Pakistan was never a conventional
threat for US. We should have always focused on China
because the kind of capability is the capacities that we
would have built to tackle China military, even along the
line of actual control, would have been sufficient to tackle
Exekistan exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
So to sort of take that forward, how much of
warri would would India be under about this China Pakistan
tango going forward, seeing that it's already happened once in
some form, uh, and that you know that that mythical
two front war an actual two front war where you

(49:18):
have both the fronts actually hot, fighting happy, whether you
know you're fighting with Pakistan on one side and then
you have China opening up front. And I was actually,
in fact a surprise that very very surprised that India
and Pakistan managed to reach that agreement to follow the
seasfire when the stand up with China was happening, because
I thought that was a perfect opportunity speaking, yes, strategically speaking,

(49:40):
for Pakistan to needle along the l o C while
India was occupied.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Along Plakistan had its own problem and they had its
own problem internal issue, so it actually suited them. The
seasfire suited them because the kind of violence that was
on they they had to I think they could move
a division plus away from the you know, luc with
India to fighting insurgency because they've been fighting their own
share of worries, their snakes in their backyard, right, So

(50:06):
that's a big problem, by the way.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Yeah, so, but I think that was then luck perhaps
on your side. So yeah, how whatried is India going
to be as it sort of you know, builds that
relationship back again with China about this also happened.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
Yea, it is. It is a huge worry they've and
it's always been. In the last five or six decades,
it's been an accelerated worry post the fall of the
Soviet Union, which was our backer militarily, diplomatically, all of that.
We lost that backer. It's come back somewhat with the
Russian Federation, but not quiet. I mean, Russia is not
the super power the former Soviet Union was. So that

(50:43):
also explains why we kind of moved towards the United
States to kind of counterbalance, you know, a rising aggressive China.
So this is what we're doing here again with the
United States with the Russian Federation. But in recent times,
I think there's the town between the United States and China.

(51:04):
We seem to have been the casualty of that because
the US, at least in the last couple of years,
seems to have lost interest in containing China as it
was in the past, and they're talking of something like
a G two group of two India, the United States,
and China, two poles, two superpars who are like pure equals.

(51:28):
And this is something that people like Henry Kissinger is
saw coming. And people like Kissinger they study again, they
don't look at years or months, they look at decades,
and he saw where the future would be in the
twenty thirties and forties, with China continuing at the rate
of that they were growing at double digit growth, they
would reach a certain point where they would be a

(51:48):
near equal of the United States. And he said, look,
treat them as your equal. Don't fight with them, don't
compete with them, which is why the Chinese had a
lot of respect for Kissinger. Possibly there was some there
were some genderous donations made as well, who knows, But
the fact is, with our rate of growth as well
they have six percent fastest growing major economy in the world,

(52:09):
we will also get to some point where we will
be the number three in the world. So, like coming
back to my earlier point about these three countries are
going to be really really important in They already are,
but they will be even more important in the decades
ahead and India because a because of the market, market
access and how you know, cleverly we play this leveraging

(52:32):
all our strengths, playing down our weaknesses and competing and
playing on our you know, relative advantages we have with
China and the United States. That's literally going to be
the story of this the next couple of decades.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Right, last point, and this one comes from Generative AI.
Actually I fed in the points I hadn'tritten down for
us to talk about.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
We use the Chinese AI.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
And not Chinese not deepsic, not deep sick. No, this
was chategy bit actually, So I give it the points
that I had noted down for us talk about, And
I said, is there anything that you'd like to ask
some deep So, yeah, there's a question. It's a very
interesting one because it goes to the core that that
you also referred to earlier, the question of trust.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
So the way, yeah, he has done it.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
So you had the Punchild agreement in nineteen fifty four,
then you had sixty two war, then the sixty seven
Tulaula clashes, Then you had the eighty six eighty seven
some stand off, then you had the ninety three ninety
six confidence building measures the one very basically you know,
the rifles and guns and stuff like that cannot carry them.
And then in the in the two thousands you've had

(53:43):
the depth sang in seven thirteen, Dog Climb, in seventeen,
Galan and twenty. You get where I think Chad GPT
was trying to go the question of trust, and Galwan
is the one that's made headlines across the world. Galwan
is the one that's you know, sort of uh, it's
an emotional subject for India, right because you've lost twenty soldiers.
It's a brutal way of to die in the first place.

(54:07):
So it's there in Indian cyc and it's going to
stay there.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
For a while.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
So the question of trust, both at the tactical level
from commander to commanders, soldier to soldier, officer to officer,
and between the diplomats wherever they're sitting, how do you
resolve that or do you not resolve that? And do
you just like you know, like you said, hide your
strengths but be ready and also yeah, be ready, but.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
You know, ensure that you don't have any clash like this. Firstly,
they should never be any clash like this on the
border right, leave it to the field commanders. They're very,
very wise, mature military commanders on both sides. And of
course be alert, be aware of any Chinese plans to
launch a certain strike or something like that, which is

(54:52):
something we should have anticipated in twenty twenty. We should
have studied their military exercises a little more closely. But
that's a topic for another day. But yeah, so trust,
but verify trust the Chinese, but do verify all their moves,
you know, judge their intent and let the field commanders
over there talk to each other right on the ground

(55:14):
level and have your hotlines so that anytime there is
an escalation like this, you see the Chinese tearing up
some agreements, be sure to give them a call and
show that this doesn't escalate very rapidly. So that's the
thing with the Chinese. But you know this, Having said
all this, they I have to ask you one question here.

(55:34):
You asked me what I'm going to ask you this.
What's the one item of cuisine that unifies India? So Chinese?
Absolutely Chinese food. You go any part of India, you
travel to any part of India, including your native states. Gujarat,
I've had the sweetest Chinese food in my life with

(55:54):
Jira in it. You know, in Damna there's Chinese food
in every part of India. Chinese food that we make
over here is is not any Chinese food, right, It's
just got a lot of noodles. And this is something
that would the Chinese would count for us torture. This
is not the but but that's one of the.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Actually the best weapon against the Chinese. Like you come
here and we'll show you how we make a Chinese food. Yeah,
we'll massacre your cuisine.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
You know, be good to us.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
It will make some Manchurian you know, right, a stand
up Withobi Manchurian.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
That's not that's not from Manchuria and it's certainly not
from the Gobi Desert, right. But you know, just to
like take that point forward and end this episode the question.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Of trust also to the point of so that was
what you talked about at the tactical level, like you know,
avoiding a clash to have for it happened. But what
what this sort of pattern shows that you know, you
have those peace periods and then you have something or
the other happening. I'm not saying there will be a clash,
there will be something like a dog club for example,
where you have an eyeble tible confrontation. Right, there's no

(57:00):
ready physical fighting happening, may be a slab or a punch,
not nothing more than that. That doesn't make headlines. Yeah,
but you have something happening that, again, you know, puts
your ties at a freeze. So is that something we
can truly avoide in the future or do you think that?
I think you know it's that Galwan was a big
lesson and five years from now. There's just that one

(57:21):
thing that happened a few days back which tells you
that this is going to be the new normal. The
Prime Minister said to visit China for the first time
in seven years. He's not been there in a long time.
Twenty seventeen, I think was his last visit to China.
That's thirty thirty first of August.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Yeah, in the monthing and this month, yes, and on
the twentieth of August, India tested the ugly five minutes right,
so signaling so this is a new normal. I think that. Listen,
We've got our strategic stuff all worked out, so there's
not going to be the India of the past where
oh it's going to be you know, love and fresh air,
and we trust everything in the Chinese tell us or

(58:00):
you know, do with us, or we trust all those
handshakes and those hugs and all of that. But this
time it's going to be different. It is we are
acutely aware of our capabilities, our capacities, and our strengths.
And that's what we've signaled to the Chinese with that
test of the Ugly five is the biggest weapon in

(58:21):
our longest range. That five thousand kilometers plus brings all
of China under range. So it's signaling. And this is
something I wouldn't have seen in the past before a
Prime Minister's visit to China. I would never see India
testing of the longest range missile in its inventory. So
this is India signaling. This is going to be the

(58:43):
new normal, and I think the Chinese understand as well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
In fact, now that you say say it, I just
realized with the five launch, Actually the person who follows
No Times Namian on social media on exit following.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
So we do, yeah, we do.

Speaker 5 (58:59):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
So he put out a very interesting thread where he
basically said that the no tamp, which is basically a
notice issued to airmen to avoid a particular airspace because
there's potentially a missile launch happening. I mean it, it
never says it's an missile launch, but that's how people interpreted.
We interpreted the max length that they were asked to
avoide kept increasing with three not tamps. So first it

(59:20):
was something, then it was something, and then it reached
almost five thousand kilometers, which, like you said, brings China
under So I didn't think of it back then, but
now that you say it messaging, your messaging, and when
the missile would not even have maybe flown that far.
By the way, don't put them just there to just
like say, who knows how.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Far it flew. We just said that we tested the missile,
and we've put out a range indicating it's the full
spectrum of the full range of the missile. And of
course there would be Chinese spice shits tracking the missile
as it flew. But yeah, this was my say. And
as they mean pointed out the range, the no time

(59:59):
kept increasing and going deeper and deeper into the Bay
of Bengal, And it's like so when it started we
were saying that it was ugly one or ugly two
or something like that, and yeah, and then by the
end of it, it was no doubt in my mind
was agni fire. I had a small thing that possibly
an ugly six, but that doesn't seem to be ready
for testing yet, at least that's what the statement suggests.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Right ended there, Then, thanks on the fantastic chat has
always had lots of fun. Thanks very much, and thanks
to all elsas and viewers as well. That's it for
this week's defense does for more tune in next week
then stay safe and not to any boundaries going to pass.

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