Is India Losing?: A conversation with Ashley Tellis

Washington DC time:  7:00pm-8:30pm, 9-Nov. 2020
Sydney, Australia time: 11:00am-12:30pm, 10-Nov. 2020 

Expectations of India’s rise have been dented in 2020. Amid lackluster economic performance and creeping socio-political illiberalism, India also suffered a major strategic setback. Chinese forces that crossed the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh remain encamped at several tactically-valuable points, and although talks continue, India has few visible options to force a return to the status quo ante. India now sees China is more clearly adversarial terms – but does it have what it takes to compete effectively? This conversation will conclude the APARC South Asia’s fall 2020 colloquium series on the India-China strategic competition with a wider and deeper look at India’s political and military power. We will discuss India’s ability to deter and balance China, its strategies to build national power and align with new partners, and the prospects for the competition in 2021 and beyond.
 

Ashley J. Tellis holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously he was commissioned into the Foreign Service and served as senior adviser to the ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. While serving as the senior adviser to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, he was intimately involved in negotiating the civil nuclear agreement with India. He also served on the National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia. Prior to his government service, Tellis was senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School. He is a counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research and serves as an adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. He is the author of India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture (2001), co-author of Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (2000), and co-editor of the sixteen latest annual volumes of Strategic Asia. He earned his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.

 

Arzan Tarapore is the South Asia research scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, where he leads the newly-restarted South Asia research initiative. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. His research focuses on Indian military strategy and contemporary Indo-Pacific security issues. He previously held research positions at the RAND Corporation, the Observer Research Foundation, and the East-West Center in Washington. Prior to his scholarly career, he served as an analyst in the Australian Defence Department, which included operational deployments as well as a diplomatic posting to Washington, DC. Tarapore holds a PhD in war studies from King’s College London.