00:07Hello and welcome to SAM Conversations, the flagship of South Asia Monitor. I am Uday Baska
00:18and today the topic of our discussion is the decision of the United States to change the name
00:26of its command, the military command in Honolulu, Hawaii from Indo-Pac-Op to Pac-Op. That is from the
00:34Indo-Pacific Command to the Pacific Command which is what the name was from 1947 onwards
00:43and it was changed to Indo-Pac-Op during Trump 1.0 in 2017.
00:50And the trigger really for our chat this evening is that our guest for this evening is Suhasini
00:59Haider, versatile, accomplished journalist, currently diplomatic editor of The Hindu.
01:05And she had a very, very insightful op-ed piece in The Hindu last week where she drew attention to
01:11the change of name and what it implied. And what struck me particularly was the fact that she was
01:17referring to the three geographies that are very relevant in this change of command. The two
01:24oceans are very clear, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. And the implications for India as also
01:32for the bilateral, that is the India-US relationship. At a time when the Indo-Pac-Op was welcomed in
01:41India,
01:42Prime Minister Modi had made reference to this at the Shangri-La dialogue. And there was a sense that
01:48there was a correspondence of strategic and security interest for India and the US in maintaining the
01:55free and open ocean. And the unstated part of course was China. It never explicitly referred to, but that was
02:04the subtext. So in the current backdrop, after the events in West Asia, after the turbulence in the
02:12India-US relationship and the fact that the United States and Israel in different ways have chosen to
02:20be transgressors of international law. What does all of this mean? Suhasini perhaps you could walk us through
02:27the first part of what you were making in your article about the implications because the United
02:32States has gone out of its way to say the geography has not changed, the operational commitments of
02:38the command remain the same. From Hollywood to Bollywood, you know, that is the popular refrain.
02:42So from their side, nothing has changed. But what is the subtext?
02:48Well, I think to begin with, most of your viewers, and thank you so much and namaste, I should say
02:54at the
02:54beginning, thank you for having me, you know, on your show. I think for most viewers, they would be aware
03:02of the
03:02decision itself. But what we know is on 16th of June, the US Pacific Command, or certainly the US Department
03:11of War,
03:11as it's known now, announced that they were restoring the designation of the US Pacific Command.
03:18Now, in that press release that they put out, and remember, it was just a few hours before I think
03:23Prime Minister Modi was meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G7 in France.
03:31And just as they put that out, they did not refer to the fact that, in fact, you know, they
03:38just
03:39simply said that the US Indo PACOM will be officially restored back to that old name of the Pacific
03:45Command, or US PACOM. And it said in its reasoning that it was restoring the legacy designation. It
03:53honors the command's deep historical roots. But, you know, we have to remember that when this change
04:01happened in 2017, as you pointed out, at that time, the wording had been very clearly aimed towards
04:12India. When they announced it, it was Jim Mattis, who was the in those days, still the Secretary of
04:19Defense. And, you know, when they when they changed the wording, they said that this was a recognition of
04:26India's position. It was a recognition, in fact, Jim Mattis, in this very eloquent speech that he gave
04:35at the time, said that it was a recognition, I think, of, of the Indo-Pacific, of the Indian Ocean,
04:45and of India itself. Now, if you are going to take away that designation,
04:51and not refer to India in any way in that, it has to be asked, what does this really mean?
04:59But the case I was really trying to make was that the changing of a name should not bother us
05:05after
05:06all the big changes we've seen in the last year in Trump 2.0 in US foreign policy and US
05:12Indo-Pacific
05:13policy, policy in the region. And as I said, across these three geographies, then we shouldn't really
05:19cavil at the change of a name, the name belongs to the US command, they can decide what their unified
05:26combatant command is going to be called at any time, we shouldn't really make too much of it.
05:32But what we should recognize is that the name has changed, but it also is a symbol of so much
05:39else that
05:40has changed in the US policy. And what we're seeing in the last year, not just in terms of this
05:45name change,
05:46as I said, is the national defense strategy of the US, the places where the US is actually
05:55investing, the place the the kind of resources the US is putting in the Indo-Pacific or not putting
06:01in the Indo-Pacific compared to the past. And finally, the role of US allies particularly,
06:08but also partners in the region. Can we also link this, for instance, with the Quad, meaning that if
06:16you look at the evolution of the Quad, from where it began initially, as a meeting between officials,
06:23and then we had the first iteration in 2007. And when India proposed an extension of Malabar Plus,
06:32we remember that the Chinese were most upset, because apart from India and the United States,
06:38we had Australia, Japan and Singapore. That was when China had issued a demarche. And it is again,
06:46a very kind of paradoxical situation that the Quad becomes de facto after the December 2004 tsunami,
06:54when India is the first country to respond to that disaster, followed by the US and then Japan and
07:01Australia. And perhaps that is what morphed or transmuted into a more formal kind of a grouping.
07:08And then we have the first round of the foreign ministers meeting. Then for a decade,
07:14what goes into the equivalent of the backburner, and it is not really actively supported politically,
07:22because of concerns about China. Obama had other issues and so on. Till you have Joe Biden. And he
07:29has the summit meeting in Delaware. That's the last sort of formal engagement for him as president.
07:35And very soon from there, in Trump 2.0, India is the chair, and we are unable to have a
07:41summit meeting.
07:43In the foreign ministers meeting that we had at the end of May, again, you know, it was a fairly,
07:47I would say, modest kind of agenda that was discussed. But at that time, the secretary of
07:54war in the US, Peter Hegseth is in Singapore signaling that the United States is now pivoting
08:01back to the Pacific. So do you see any kind of, you know, shall we say linkages over there?
08:06Well, I certainly think the Quad became, in a sense, the, you know, the flag bearer of the US's
08:14Indo-Pacific policy for several years. It's not to say that the US does not have other parts to the
08:20Indo-Pacom and now the Pacom that was working at the same time, whether it was in the South China
08:26Sea,
08:26whether it was with their treaty allies, you know, what is called Quad Plus with Australia and Japan,
08:33but also countries like South Korea and others in the region. So, and of course,
08:41there was AUKUS between Australia, UK and the US for submarines. But the Quad really became
08:49the understanding that India was now a part of this strategy that was going to look at how to,
09:02in a sense, contain China, in a sense, counter China, in a sense, counter balance China. So it
09:09wasn't just about some kind of a maritime security arrangement. Of course, some of it was, you know,
09:17humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, as you pointed out, it came from the tsunami in 2004,
09:23when I think these other three countries were suddenly very impressed with India's prowess,
09:27its ability to mobilize. I think so many ships and planes and more than 5000 personnel to help other
09:35countries, even though India itself had been hit by the tsunami. And you're quite right in pointing out
09:42that the Quad saw some dips, mainly because of the US's desire at various points to give some messaging
09:53to China. So in 2008, when the Obama administration felt it needed China on board for things like climate
10:02change conferences, as well as the North Korea talks at the time, then the US decided to go a bit
10:09easy
10:09on the Quad. And this is something that former Foreign Secretary Shamsaran has written about.
10:14When post 2010 and 2012, when the confrontation between the US and China, particularly in the
10:21South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits, started to become much more obvious. And in terms of,
10:28in terms of, you know, China's blue water navy and all its rise really in the ocean spaces, we saw
10:37the US now
10:38looking once again towards India and towards the Quad. And by 2018, when they, when you know, they had their
10:47meetings with the officials 2017, 2018, Trump was back in, was Trump 1.0 at the time. And then they
10:56had
10:56foreign minister meetings. It was all about China. I can remember then Secretary of State Pompeo coming
11:03to Delhi, and essentially openly speaking about the fact that the Quad was a counterpoint to China.
11:10That's not a formulation India has liked. Now we see this move in terms of renaming PACOM,
11:17or as they call it, restoring the name of PACOM. We see it in conjunction with the fact that the
11:24national defense strategy no longer talks about the Quad. We see it in conjunction with the fact that for
11:29the past year, the US itself has dismantled USAID, which was the chief aid agency that was running
11:37a lot of the Quad programs. So as a result, even though US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has held
11:44several meetings of Quad foreign ministers, I think there have been three so far, and it was one of his
11:49his first, it was his first multilateral meeting when he took over. Despite that, what we're seeing
11:55is the actual agenda of the Quad has been pared down. It has become a lot slimmer than it used
12:01to be.
12:01I think if you go back and see the Delaware summit agenda, and then compare it to what we saw
12:07the next
12:08year, it was a, what they called a rationalized agenda in four different, four specific silos.
12:15And the idea was that now they would focus on only these four areas. And very broadly, you know, that
12:26these four areas was maritime security, it was economic prosperity in the region, critical and
12:34emerging minerals technology, including AI cooperation, and disaster responses. So nothing very ambitious
12:41in any of this, it wasn't like the cancer moonshot they were speaking about, or the vaccine initiative,
12:46or any of those. And then use it. So it's in conjunction with the fact that the national
12:51defense strategy now no longer talks about the Quad, that USAID that is looking at specific resources for
12:58this region is no longer, you know, is no longer existent in a certain sense. We're looking at the fact
13:06that,
13:07you know, the Quad's own agenda has been bared down that we don't know when the next Quad summit will
13:12happen. As you pointed out, since January 2024, India has been trying to host this, and has been
13:20unsuccessful. And Mr. Rubio has said now that Mr. Trump will probably come next year. So if he comes
13:25to India in 2027, what does that mean for the Quad summit again? And the fourth thing, and I think
13:31this is,
13:32just to finish, we're seeing all of this happen after the outreach to China. So it's very difficult to not
13:40surmise that some of what this US moves are mean in this region of breaking away from the term Indo
13:48-Pacific,
13:49you referred to Mr. Hexed's speech, he doesn't once refer to it. There are no mentions of Indo-Pacific in
13:56his
13:56latest speech. There were 30 mentions of the Indo-Pacific in his 2025 speech. So what do we
14:03make of all of that? And I think China is definitely one of the reasons we're seeing this change.
14:09You know, there are two inputs here, Suhasini, that you might want to also factor in.
14:13One is specific to the Quad. The baton has now been passed. India has passed the baton to Australia.
14:21So if there is a summit meeting, it would be held with Australia as the chair. So to that extent,
14:27I think this would be a void, you know, in terms of the Quad summits and the fact that India
14:33was the
14:33chair. That's one. The second is for me as a sailor, I thought one of the interesting takeaways from the
14:39foreign minister meeting and coming to what has India got out of the Quad? What has India got from
14:46the partnership with the United States? I think maritime domain awareness and the related surveillance
14:54kind of initiatives that were mentioned in the foreign minister's meeting held in May,
15:00when Mr. Hexit was here, which incidentally was also his first visit. And there was an important
15:06bilateral kind of agenda there. To my mind, it was significant, meaning that the Quad has waxed and
15:13waned with how the White House has perceived it. But there are a couple of abiding features. I mean,
15:20you can look at the fortunes of the Quad, starting with President Obama and the way in which he
15:29prioritized the Quad. As you rightly pointed out, for him, it was a relationship with China.
15:34And at that time, a lot of the Obama oxygen was going towards Iran and the nuclear deal,
15:41the 5 plus 1 deal. Subsequently, you see in Trump 1.0, the beginning of looking at the Quad more
15:49seriously. In that one period, you know, you find that the foreign ministers meet more regularly than
15:56they ever did from 2007 to 2017. I mean, that's an interesting indicator about the political importance
16:02given. But one thing that remains is for the United States, China becomes a pacing challenge.
16:07If you remember, that's the term they use to describe China. And now again, you see that
16:13there is the equivalent of perhaps a rapprochement. President Donald Trump goes to China. Now there is
16:21talk about Xi Jinping going to the United States in September. And again, perhaps there may be some
16:27kind of accommodation. But from the professional side, the Pacific commander in Honolulu, just two months
16:35ago went to the Congress and spoke about China as the primary challenge for him, for his command.
16:40And he wanted $112 billion for making sure that his material inventory was in place.
16:48That is the perspective from the US. For us in India, China remains a very complex challenge,
16:54post Galwan and India's own anxiety about the unresolved territorial dispute that is still there on the radar.
17:01But despite what Mr. Wangji had said recently, when he had come for the national security advisors
17:07meeting, the BRICS forum, those are, as I said, so far abiding. So the real question, as I said,
17:19is that for India and the US, the maritime domain, in relation to their abiding security challenges,
17:27how do you think that's going to clear?
17:30You know, I would agree with you. I think the sensible path from here is to look at what the
17:35US
17:36and India can do together. And you're right that for the Quad to discuss maritime domain awareness in
17:41the kind of detail they did is definitely very positive. It is an unprecedented kind of
17:48information sharing that would be very useful. But I think we have to de-link the idea of
17:58this particular cooperation, which we're also doing, after all, through things like the IFC,
18:04the fusion center that we run in Gurgaon, the fact that we have Indian officers posted at various
18:13commands for the US as well. So I think that is in terms of a positive, in terms of the
18:20cooperative.
18:20But I think that the status that was perhaps given to the Quad, with the idea of these four big
18:29naval powers of the region coming together, has in the US mind, lost some of its salience. And that's
18:36what we're seeing coming through, regardless of the kind of cooperation we can do. I think that is one
18:42part. I do have to also ask one question. And this is something perhaps you could give me an idea
18:50on is,
18:51you know, once the US got into the war in Iran, and we saw it torpedoing the Iranian ship, the
18:59Iris Dana,
19:01at the end of the war, we saw the US Navy's attacks on Indian, on Indians onboard ships and on
19:09three ships
19:10over, I think, three days, in which, in one of which, three Indians unfortunately lost their lives.
19:17And the question that these kinds of operations are not being discussed in the Quad.
19:25These kinds of operations are being put aside. So we see on one side, we will cooperate, we will
19:30cooperate on maritime domain awareness, we will share information, share real-time information on what's
19:36going on. But when the US itself, a member of the Quad, carries out actions that if any other world
19:44leader had done or any other country had done in the Indian Ocean, you can be quite sure India would
19:49have raised it much more strongly. Then you have to start wondering about what you were saying, which
19:55is the utility of this kind of cooperation for India, because eventually that's what we have to look at.
20:01The second point, I think, where maybe there is a lack of communication or understanding,
20:09is on what defines the Indo-Pacific. India has been very clear that the Indo-Pacific goes all the way
20:16to
20:16the coast of Africa. For the PACOM and the Indo-PACOM before it, as you said, it was Hollywood to
20:25Bollywood.
20:26So it was to India's western coast. That is the limit of the PACOM. But is the Quad's mandate
20:33the entirety of the Indian Ocean, or is it only up to India's western coast? I think this is a
20:40very
20:40important area there, where what we've seen is both sides don't seem to have the same idea. And even
20:46countries like Australia and Japan, you know, their leaders were here for, their foreign ministers were
20:53here for that meeting of the Quad in Delhi. And we did try to ask them specifically this question
20:58about the kind of US operations that we saw with the Iris Dena, as well as in terms of Iran's
21:08attacks
21:09that went towards Diego Garcia. And now these attacks on these ships in the Gulf of Oman, which
21:17from the Indian point of view is part of the Indian Ocean. And all of them seemed to have the
21:22same
21:22understanding that this is not the area of the Quad's mandate. But I can remember a time in which
21:29the Biden administration had actually accepted that India's concerns, which was for the entire Indian
21:35Ocean, and of course, this includes our western flank and Pakistan in particular, were going to be part
21:43of the Quad's mandate. So I think these two points that for one side that yes, we do benefit from
21:50their, from this cooperation and from the kind of information we might be able to share. But we
21:56need to have much more trust and security in order to also discuss the tough areas when the US behaves
22:03in a unilateral manner in this region, as well as an understanding of what the region itself is.
22:09You know, there's no doubt, Suhasini, that as we rightly pointed out, the United States in recent months,
22:16particularly after February 28, when the war began against Iran, has ridden roughshod over Indian
22:24sensitivities on a range of issues. The topidowing of the Iranian ship, for instance, India was not able
22:30to say anything, not even offer condolences. And then, of course, we've had the missile attack on
22:37the tankers and the loss of Indian seafarers' lives. And you will recall that when Prime Minister Modi
22:44raised this with President Trump, it was completely dismissed as, you know, stuff happens in war.
22:49It was really, I think, deeply. It's a rough profession. Absolutely. And that, I thought,
22:54was indicative, again, of the fact that India has chosen, and may I add, very prudently,
23:00not to raise these in a public manner, because we know what happened after the Nobel Peace Prize.
23:08So, to that extent, I think, you know, India has made this political kind of decision,
23:14that it must remain invested in the bilateral, which is very important for India across the board.
23:19Are we paying a price? The answer is yes. But in the military and the maritime domain,
23:26I think this has been one of the empirical features, that even when the relationship was very estranged,
23:33at different points, the professional cooperation between the two navies and the kind of interaction
23:40has remained. And that has served India, I would say, in a very positive way. Why I'm raising this is,
23:45there is a lot of dismay in India about the bilateral relationship, and how President Trump
23:50has treated India. This is the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the United States in July 4.
23:57And we are also familiar with the current US ambassador, and the equivalent of his outreach,
24:03which has raised not only eyebrows, but caused a fair amount of dismay. But this is Trump 2.0 for
24:09you.
24:11But my only point is that notwithstanding this, that specific to the maritime domain,
24:16India should remain invested, whether it is Indo-Pacom or Pacom. And that at the end of the day,
24:23we have to see how India's capabilities in the maritime and naval domain are enhanced, and what
24:32kind of technology or know-how we are able to get. At the moment, it is very limited. But I
24:38want to
24:38thank you for raising all these issues, and particularly your point about free geographies.
24:43Because West Asia as a geography unto itself is going to be very complex and difficult for us.
24:49And in many ways, India's claim to be able to provide security and growth for all in the region,
24:57was put to test in recent months. And all the more reason, if you look at the G7, for instance,
25:03the statement, they talk about the demining of the hormones, and the responsibilities devolving on UK
25:10and France, because we do not have the capability. So these are the kind of issues I think we also
25:17need
25:17to ponder. But again, thank you so much, Suhasini. And I hope we can bring you back to discuss some
25:23of the related issues. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me on.
25:28Thank you for watching Sam Conversations. We'll be back again very soon.
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