September 27th, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad spoke at the UN General Assembly. In his speech, he said that Jammu and Kashmir was “invaded and occupied”, and there may be reasons but it is “still wrong”. He stated that he’s been trying to get India and Pakistan to cooperate and talk out the issue through negotiations, but India Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded by saying it was his choice whether to respond with negotiations to settle the problem of terrorism in the region.
At this moment, it’s worth taking a look at the relationship between India and Malaysia. Right now they are trade partners. In fact, India is the biggest buyer of Malaysian palm oil, Malaysia’s biggest export. Last year they purchased an amount of oil worth over $2 billion.
Recently, India has been threatening to officially curb the purchase of palm oil from Malaysia in response to these comments. The reason I say “officially” is because many Indian buyers are already shifting to other suppliers, such as Indonesia, and the tag #BoycottMalaysia is trending on social media. This isn’t the first time that trade has been used as a bargaining chip, but usually it’s done by bigger countries like the US or China. And as expected, Malaysia quickly changed its opinion on how India is handling the Kashmir situation. They’re even offering to increase imports from India to smooth things over.
I’m honestly surprised that India has the power to use economic dominance over another country. I didn’t think they were as big of a power as they seem to be becoming. They’re on the list of countries that have access to nukes, they have a population of almost 1.4 billion people, and their 2017 GDP is $2.6 trillion USD. They’re definitely a growing power. I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in the future there was a war between China and India. I don’t think any specific event between the two has caused tensions to raise, but China is a nation that likes to be the sole power in a region. If India rises to China’s level or greater, there will definitely be multiple conflicts and eventually an all-out war between the two.