“Indo-Pacific” Gone, Great! Trump’s flattery at G7… ummm, troubles ahoy!

Posted on June 22, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Leaders at G7]

There was a moment in the lineup at the G7 summit in Nice, France, when on the two-step podium both the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi behind the US President Donald Trump, in the foreground, were unattended, with the other leaders milling around, gladhanding each other. But, Modi and Trump were each fully aware of the other, but neither made a move towards shaking hands. That tells its own story. This was no bad thing to happen, however!

At the one-one-on-one meeting that Modi risked, the Indian PM resisted his habit of embracing the American. When the press were ushered in, one could see a tense Modi waiting for the US President to put him on a spot. Fortunately for the Indian leader, he did not do so, bringing up, what else, Sindoor much later in an interview to Axios after his return disclosing, for instance, that between them the Indian and the Pakistani air forces lost “eleven” aircraft in the 88-hour war!

But, as predicted, Trump did pick on some one, and it was the Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni. Trump, for no good reason than his customary malice, broadcast to the world that Meloni had “begged him for a photo” with him, he felt sorry for her, and complied! It got a withering response from Giorgia and, just like that, the bilateral relations plunged and will likely stay poisoned for the duration of Trump’s presidency. It prompted the Italian foreign minister to cancel his trip to Washington to meet with the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

But the vivacious Meloni has a definite chemistry with Modi, to whom she had earlier naughtily conveyed their status as “the most famous couple on instagram”! Can’t imagine our PM not blushing at this effulgence of goodwill! [In this pic unseen is Jaishankar on the side with a Cheshire cat grin!] That may have been the high point for the Indian PM.

[Meloni & Modi]

Because Modi ended up suffering a worse fate than Meloni! The Indian Prime Minister was swamped by the kind of hyperbolised flattery that only Trump can deliver with a straight face that is so deliberately outlandish, bordering on silly, as to be hurting, and meant to belittle its subject. It invited, as perhaps expected, the kind of public attention to the flatteree! An example of how the more staid British media covered this episode: The Independent of UK reported Trump as saying of Modi that “He is the most beautiful man, like an angel. He is a killer, he is a tough man. He loves Indian people and also loves US people”. With the upper lip properly stiff, the English newspaper commented that “The US president went further, linking the future of bilateral ties to Mr Modi’s leadership.”

You can literally see Modi (in the pic below) wondering to himself: “What more embarrassments is this idiot going to pile on me” and, across the meeting space, an appalled Rubio silently commiserating with the Indian leader, his possibly unspoken sentiment — “Now you know what I have to put up with every day!!”

[A tense Modi in his meeting with Trump]

Trump did not let up on this vein of pointed exaggeration. In an interview to Axios on his return, he paired Modi with the Chinese jefe maximo, Xi Jinping, as two of the “greatest leaders” he has dealt with. Regarding Modi and Xi, to quote Trump in toto: “Well, I think Modi is very good. …Yeah, they’ve had some very good [economic] numbers announced. He stays out of wars, which is smart. He’s 1.5 billion people….Modi’s a great leader, and we do a lot of business with them, but now we do fair business. They used to really rip us off. I don’t blame them for that. We had stupid politicians, but, that allowed that to happen. But now we do a lot of business. They’re not that happy about it because they used to do a lot better. But Modi’s great. President Xi is great. Classics, you know. I mean, if you were going to make a movie about either one of them, you wouldn’t be able to find the man in Hollywood. I’m telling you. As an example, the look of Xi, he’s got a great look. Looks don’t matter, right? We don’t like to, they say don’t talk about looks, but he’s tall. He’s 6 foot 2. He’s got a great stature. He’s got great confidence, and he is smart. Modi in a very different way. Just highly respected. I’ve seen, you know, I know the real Modi is a very tough cookie.” [For the interview see  https://www.axios.com/2026/06/19/trump-axios-show-interview-transcript-marc-caputo ] So, guess, who Trump is really immpressed by!

Many people here, however, read the tea leaves correctly, figuring that a Trump “ambush” was coming — first soften Modi, the target, with over-the-top flattery, next pressure him into conceding — in this case, on the provisions in the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that are hanging fire. If it doesn’t go the way Trump wants, he will feel free to dump publicly on Modi, again. One can only hope the Prime Minister did not swallow Trump’s nonsense whole or even in parts because, unlike Iran, which he respects because it was still standing after he had thrown everything at it that the US military could possibly muster short of N-weapons, and refused to accept other than a favourable Hormuz deal, which the American media has taken to calling a “surrender”, Trump has no respect for India, and time and again has displayed it. Because Delh and Modi have always folded even with a strong hand. Hence, the US leader did not take the lead in shaking hands with Modi when both were free to do so at the outdoor G7 podium. The FTA in the works will prove or disprove this thesis.

Still, the fact that the Indian government has no strategic filter for its policies is obvious. It rushed into supporting the “freedom of navigation” issue in the Hormuz Strait on the side of its main Gulf partner, UAE, and Israel and the US, when prudence suggested Delhi should have been silent, said nothing. Because it can do a strategic Hormuz choke on the Malacca Strait tomorrow. After all, who knows that this might not be an option for India in the future? It is the consideration of such a possibility that, perhaps, led to Beijing supporting what it called “stable transit” — a legally different concept to free navigation. It is the kind of strategic foresight that always seems beyond Delhi’s reach, and why India ends up paying dearly for giving up potential leverage, assuming it even appreciates Malacca as leverage! Moreover, after this episode, will Tehran be as accommodative of Chabahar as the Indian North-South gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia? And will India again peg its energy policy of sourcing oil from Russia to fit Trump’s waiver policy?

Almost simultaneous with the end of the G7 summit, Pentagon announced that the “Indo-Pacific” moniker for the Honolulu-based theatre military command was banished, and its old name — ‘Pacific Command’, restored. Ajay Srivastava, founder of a think tank, the Global Trade Research Initiative, and a leading expert on FTAs, is right in saying it signals “a shift in Washington’s priorities”, with the US increasingly viewing India “only as a large market rather than a central strategic partner in its Asian strategy.” This re-naming event read alongside Trump’s ridiculous flattery of Modi does, in fact, suggest that Washington is desperate for a favourable FTA that can milk the vast Indian market, and facilitate continued use of its native talent but without actually getting Indian engineers and scientists into the US via the H1B visa route, which stands all but terminated. Instead, the same talent is now harvested in India by the growing horde of Global Capability Centres where Indians work (in $ terms) for a pittance, and specialise in advancing frontier tech, generating for Western companies the patents which produce wealth for the US and Western Europe.

So, what’s keeping Indians from working in India to produce the same wealth for the country? The bureaucrat-heavy system of over-regulation and corruption so dear to the babus that Modi promised to do away with, but has not so far shown the guts radically to reform and change other than minorly. And so local talent finds that Modi’s rhetoric of atmnirbharta, viksit Bharat, etc. notwithstanding, it cannot get its hands on the seed-capital the government says is there for them to secure. These talented but dispirited innovators, who have to jump through official hoops for the sligthest consideration, are left with no options other than to move to Singapore or Silicon Valley to get it, there they realise their dreams, and return with the same innovative, patented solutions they had earlier sought Indian government funding for, ironically to find the same Indian agencies more receptive, and eager to pay top dollar for their wares now that they sport the Singapore or Silicon Valley chaap!

All this is part of the same mosaic.

The renaming of the US theatre command is not at issue here. But rather that ‘Indo-Pacific’ denoted the areas preferred for major military deployments. As it is, the Pentagon has been at its wit’s end deciding what quantum of land, sea and air forces to assign to which theatre, and how to cut down on military presence world-wide. Hence, to trim expenditures the Stuttgart (Germany)-based US Africa Command is on the cutting block. And, to motivate European members to pull their weight, Trump is withdrawing American units from Europe. And because Asian states feared that Trump would next trim the US military in their region, making them more vulnerable to Chinese adventurism in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and around the Senkaku Islands, the ‘Pacific Command’ nomenclature was an easy way for Washington to reassure its traditional allies — Japan, South Korea and indirectly Taiwan. In this context, the ‘Indo’ part of the enterprise was expendable as it distracted from the main mission of containing China seaward in the Pacific to the “first island chain”.

There was no hesitation by the US, moreover, to move in this direction because over the last decade, Trump and his advisers found Delhi at once politically wary and militarily reticent to commit to the Quad — which had been touted as the cutting edge to ringfence China within a bigger compass, and which mission was discovered as being inadequately met by India. Delhi seemed too preoccupied with its own immediate vicinity to be of much use to any one else. The annual Malabar maritime exercise was simply not sufficient recompense, nor were the four foundational accords (GSOMIA, LEMOA. COMCASA, BECA) that enabled the provisioning of American warships, refuelling of US military aircraft transiting to other theatres, and repairing and refitting warships at Indian bases and shore installations, and which services continue to be available to US forces, decisive.

Furthermore, the earlier Indo-Pacific command and the current US Pacific Command jurisdiction stops, as it always did at the Indian border, with Pakistan, anchoring the eastern end of the Tampa Bay-based US Central Command. Incidentally, the previous Commander-in-Chief, US Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, was in thick with Asim Munir and helped the Pakistan military during Op Sindoor to access realtime satellite intelligence showing Indian force dispositions and Elint (electronic intel) eavesdropping on Indian military communications. In July 2025, a grateful Munir arranged to have Pakistan confer on Kurilla its highest military honour — the Nishan-e-Imtiaz and, recently on the latter’s retirement, flew all the way to Florida to attend his farewell ceremony.

But, why is the return of PACOM good for India? Because the Modi government needs to be disabused of the notion enbedded in its collective consciousness that the US can be relied on for strategic security against China. Washington was ever interested in cutting a separate deal with Xi, and never — even in the ‘Indo-Pacific’ years, in saving India’s goose. This is the background for Trump’s being insultingly patronising in his Axios interview.

Referring to security cooperation between India and the US, Trump said: “I think it is a great relationship. If they were attacked, we would be there to help them. We don’t have a contract [meaning there’s no formal alliance], but if they are attacked and he (PM Modi) is the leader, we are going to be there to help. If there is another leader, I don’t know about that, but if they are attacked and he is the leader, we are going to help. As long as I am president, they (India) have a great friend in the White House.”

One is not sure what to make of Trump trying to bolster Modi politically in this manner, as if the Indian PM needed any assistance from a tyro. Or, why the US president thinks voicing his commitment to help India if it is “attacked” by China (obviously) only if it is headed by Modi is going to help Modi! Such amateurish and theatrical ejaculations by the American president should be just as airily dismissed by Delhi. He has done Modi no favours by treating him like a maiden in distress who is waiting for “Lochinvar” to ride in from the west to save her, when Giorgia Meloni showed the balls to blow Trump a raspberry!

Because India never does what is in its own interest unless compelled to do so by situations and circumstances, hopefully the US’ signalling its lack of strategic interest in the Indian Ocean will be the prod for India to begin preparing seriously to fight its own battles and to take China on, on its own. For far too long the Indian military has keyed on, and still does if you consider the existing force structure, on the minimal threat from Pakistan. It has systematically disabled itself since 1947 from handling the larger, more potent, danger that China poses. Degrading its own mission and capability thus has reduced the country, including in helping Islamabad to convince the world to re-hyphenate India and Pakistan in the new Century!

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Only 40-50 Rafales will be bought, if at all; rest MRFA Su-57E

Posted on June 15, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Ceremonial welcome for Modi in Nice, France]

Earlier today, the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the French President Emannuel Macron in Nice in southern France did not result in the usual giveaway deal — a characteristic of Indian foreign policy in the new millennium. That there was no mention of Delhi plonking $43 billion for the useless Rafale, came as a relief.

May be, Modi finally understands that using arms buys as a foreign policy means of winning small consideration from the US and states in Europe, exacts really high costs, beggars the country, and in no way helps India technologically in any meaningful way.

But old habits of mind die hard and Rafale may still be bought but not in the numbers the IAF wishes. Indeed, it seems the advice from the highest levels of the joint military was heeded by the PM, and it is that if Rafale must be bought then only 40-60 more of the 4.5 generation Rafale combat aircraft — the same generation as the indigenous Tejas, be purchased. The argument ostensibly made was that if the full complement of 114 aircraft is obtained from Dassault, it’d mean buying more platforms than equally exorbitantly priced weapons such as the Meteor air-to-air missile, each of which costs Rs 60 crore! A fully loaded Rafale’d cost a head-turning Rs 1,000 crores!!! And given the Indian Air Force’s dubious record to-date of losing aircraft on the very first day of any operation, several thousands of crores of rupees could be lost in the first half hour of any conflict! It’d appear a case made this way is not easy to refute. How many Rafale will actually be bought depends on whether France relents on “source codes”, which are software instructions for the design know why. In the case, of the avionics suite, for instance, the source codes are contained in the Interface Control Document (ICD).

The reason Delhi has stiffened its stance and is pushing Paris on this issue is because two other offers are on the table — Russia’s complete with tech-transfer, including source codes, for its 5th generation fighter — Su-57E, and Sweden’s for its Saab 4.5 gen Gripen E. The Gripen is being peddled as a cost-effective and cost-efficient alternative and, in utility terms, as falling somewhere between the Rafale and the Tejas. Indeed, the differences in the figures provided by Saab regarding the comparative unit price and the operating cost are staggering. According to the Swedes, a single Gripen may cost anything from $85 million to $140 million compared to $300 million for a Rafale, and while the Gripen costs between $4,000-$10,000 per hour to operate, the counterpart expenditure for Rafale is $14,000 per hour! Do your arithmetic and you find the lifetime cost of having Rafales in the fleet, could well send the country into the poor house.

Not sure what the operating cost of the Su-57 is, but it is nowhere near Rafale’s. Besides, India can purchase as many as three Sukhoi-57 multi-role fighters for the price of one Rafale. But none of these foreign aircraft can beat the Tejas on any metric were its production to be scaled up and, as recommended by this analyst over some 15 years now, the private sector given a parallel contract for its production to rival the one given the defence public sector unit, the hopeless HAL, which can’t produce a thing on time or at cost.

Combat aircraft are pricey items and, in this age of drones, an unaffordable luxury. But the Indian government which is otherwise fiscally responsible, apparently gets into a brain freeze when confronted by the hardware demands of the IAF in particular — or why else would it approve previous payouts for Rafale?

Here’s the secret why, gleaned after soundings at the highest levels of the military. Modi believes France and Israel are the countries India should tap for military goods, that this will help “diversify” the sources of military supply, and as alternative to the US and Russia. In our system, what the PM wants the country gets, even if it is manifestly the worst option!

And further, it also matters what Modi’s two ministers with some say in such purchases believe. The Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is the “old time politician” who thinks Russia is a reliable supplier and the country should stay with it. Hence, we have the Su-57 in the running. And external affairs minister S. Jaishankar — surprise! surprise! pleading for US-sourced stuff — the F-35 (?) and for endless buys of P-8Is, and the C-130Js and C-17s transporters.

Then there’s the fact of Rajnath Singh beginning to command respect in the military also for his siding with and supporting the armed services in their endless tussles with the Defence Ministry bureaucrats. No small thing! A senior officer reflecting the prevailing sentiment, said this: Rajnath may not be a Parrikar, but he has our back. The late Manohar Parrikar, an IIT engineer with a problem-solving mindset and forensic skills in evaluating comparative offers of expensive foreign armaments leaned, incidentally, towards augmenting the numbers of the Su-30MKI (that I had advocated and still do) rather than going in for the Rafale. Parrikar was by far the best defence minister India has had and, for his cost-saving efforts, was shifted back to Goa as chief minister!

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Best for Modi NOT to have a one-on-one with Trump at G-7

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

Fooling around [with the charkha!]

Get Donald Trump in an unfamiliar setting, have him him do things he hasn’t done, and there’s a good chance he’ll end up being a li’l puddy cat. Like when he (along with his wife, Melania) was given a charkha to handle, on his last visit at M.K. Gandhi’s ashram (or something in Gujarat).

But the G-7 June 15-17 summit at the French riverside town of Évian-les-Bains near the Swiss border with casinos and other pleasure domes, is not a place for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to risk a one-on-one meeting with the US President, who is only too familiar with Europe and is so at ease in these surroundings that he has used them in the past to harangue and belittle his European counterparts.

Modi is there at the French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation, who is ever so grateful that the Indian government saved the French aerospace industry one more time by shelling some $43 billion for the vintage Rafale fighter aircraft without any real tech transfer! This Indian money will come in handy now that the tripartite 6th generation future combat aircraft system programme involving France, Germany and Spain, is formally terminated.

Macron’s agenda for the conference is expected to feature global trade imbalances and the two ongoing wars — in Ukraine and Hormuz. In the context of the European Union generally deciding to counter China’s uncontrolled exports push by possibly imposing tariffs and putting up other barriers to Chinese merchandise, Modi should have no problem in piling on China, wagging a finger at it, or whatever else the G-7 collectively undertake to do by way of curtailing Chinese imports. In India’s case, the imbalance is so great it is getting to be criminal to not just shut down at least the merchandise imports. And please, no scurrying around for Chinese investments which don’t come without strings attached.

Where the conflict zones are concerned, Modi better be cautious. Delhi already has egg on its face by joining the British initiative to send a naval task force to the Hormuz Strait and the Gulf of Oman to enforce “freedom of navigation”. It is a good thing nothing has come of it, or India would have been on the hook. Moreover,Tehran is already much stressed without India joining the West in belabouring it some more. Especially because it is not Iranian shore fire that hit the Palau-flagged ship but US guided munitions, that killed three Indians in the crew on June 8th. (Palau is a small archepelagic nation in the Pacific.)

Because Iran matters geostrategically to India as it offers the North-South trade route through the port of Chabahar, which is still India’s best bet to open up the landward trade links to Afghanistan and Central Asia and westwards to Russia and Europe, and as competition to China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Because the other project India is part of — IMEEC (India-Middle East Europe Corridor) also to rival the BRI in the extended region is, in the aftermath of the war in Hormuz, unlikely to come to fruition before the 2040s.

Moreover, when peace arrives — however that happens, the Indian Navy has to have a presence on Gwadar’s western flank that the PLA Navy is itching to develop into a major resupply base for its ships it hopes permanently to station in the Indian Ocean west of Malacca, Lombok and Sunda. There’s, in other words, too much for India to lose should Modi choose the wrong side, when sitting on the fence serves Indian interests best. Isn’t this how “strategic autonomy” works? The trouble is Delhi tilted perceptibly towards the US and Israel and to UAE, when it did not have to.

Of course, Israel is a seperate case and our close connection with the Jewish state cannot and should not under any circumstances be weakened. Here India has an opportunity to thread the needle by maintaining a policy of repose, reacting to nothing that either Iran or Israel does, in the hope that at the end of the conflict Tel Aviv, with strained relations with the US, will need India’s anchor support, even if that means tolerating Delhi’s overtures to Tehran. But shia Iran will need recultivation because Delhi’s siding with UAE — India’s prized Arab and sunni pivot in the Gulf, crimped ties with Tehran.

The point to make is this: At the end of the Hormuz war, Trump’s America will hightail it out of the region, Israel and UAE will firm up a front against Iran, even as the Ayatollahcracy survives, propped up by the Revolutionary Guard Corps that proved to the world their country’s resilience and sturdiness under intense US fire. This is no small outcome because it has convinced even the most rabid of the “regime change” crowd in Washington that “bombing the f..k” (Trump’s words) out of Iran is easier said than done. For India, it is an object lesson on how a middling country can stand up to big power bullying.

Consider a situation in which India faced the kind of intense American military attention that Iran suffered but successfully thwarted: Would India and the Indian government, which seemingly specialise in folding at the first hint of trouble or pressure, as has repeatedly occurred, be able to put up as brave and solid a front???

Anyway, back to Evian! Jaishankar and MEA are doubtless urging Modi to prepare for a closed door meeting with Trump. That’s BAD advice, unless Modi desires Trump to once again make a monkey out of him in France, this time. The fact is no mainstream leader, let alone Modi, can have the better of Trump simply because for the US President even the friendlist encounter is an occasion to show who is boss! Recall, the handshake grudge matches Trump regularly engages in with Macron (which may again be seen at the G-7 summit)? And because Trump glows in exhibiting lack of restraint, especially at such showcase conferences and delights in picking on some leader or the other to kick around. And who can say it won’t be Modi who, in the European setting, will stick out like a sore thumb?

Sindoor is a recent enough experience for Modi to be wary of any move to pitch him into a Trump meeting that the US ambassador Sergio Gor too seems to be pushing, from behind the curtain. If Sindoor taught the Indian government anything it is to not signal or otherwise inform Washington of moves it may intend to make, and to keep its thinking on issues to itself. Not that US intelligence will not have a fair idea of what’s cooking in MEA and at the PMO — after all no system is more “penetrated” than the Indian one, and then at the top most levels.

At Evian, actually, Modi has very little of substance to say to Trump, and vice versa. If so, then why step in wittingly into a situation where, with the world media looking on, Trump says something once again about how he saved India from a Pakistani thrashing, or whatever spin of the monent he wants to give it, even as Modi stands there dumbstruck, unable to counter with a telling riposte about Trump as usual not knowing what he is talking about, or something more insulting. This is as likely as not to happen because Pakistan-US relations are currently enjoying high summer. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told The Sunday Times (of London) that Pakistan’s serving as a mediator in the U.S.-Iran war is “one of the shining moments in our history.” And former Pak ambassador in Washington Masood Khan chirped in, saying. “We are in seventh heaven and on cloud nine and it’s intoxicating. I’ve had a long diplomatic career and I have never seen Pakistan on such a high pedestal.”

The fact of the matter is the Modi government has already compromised national interests on the Free Trade Agreements with the US (and Europe), as regards energy by limiting buys of Russian oil, and by not reacting at all to Trump’s tariff war or his egregious insults that he has not stopped periodically hurling at Modi and, therefore, at India.

Modi should instruct Jaishankar to tell the US side that the Indian leader cannot spare the time because his appointments book for the Evian summit is full. It will send a much needed message to the Trump Administration not to take India for granted, and that Delhi is not America’s handmaid.

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Tighten belts says PM, then $43 Bn thrown at Rafale, another $10 Billion for a diesel submarine

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi embracing a calculating French President Emmanuel Macron]

The stormy after-effects of the US war on Iran so far have slowed the oil and LNG traffic from the Gulf to a crawl, decelerated the country’s exports and the economy, and disrupted global trade. The exchange rate hit the Rs 100 to a single US$ mark, and Rs 100 is also, what a newspaper headline a few days ago screamed, the cost of a litre of petrol had exceeded. The conservation of hard currency reserves being the government’s primary concern, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, looking sombre, advised the people the week before last to abjure foreign trips, conserve gasoline, and to return to the frugality of the restrictive COVID regimen of working at least two days of the week from home. BJP chief ministers promptly took to public transport with media contingents recording such gestures at economising, and the traffic visibly thinned on the roads.

The country seems to be heading into dire economic straits, with plunging indices. As one of the largest imports consuming countries in the world, its hard currency reserves of some $689 billion (as of end-May) are depleting fast, but just sufficient, other than debt servicing, for less than 10 months of imports at the current rate of consumption of everything ranging from capital and consumer goods to energy. Worse, net Foreign Direct Investment that the government had hoped to ride to good times plummeted by 96% in just one year, from $10 billion in 2024 to $353 million last year, compelling Delhi to make nice with arch enemy China, and to ease the flow of predatory Chinese capital into the country. So, even as China screws India economically, militarily, and diplomatically, India has to grin and bear it! To salt the wounds, Nature too is playing hookey — the Monsoons are expected to be off by 60%, meaning by end-2026, the country could be on the ropes, food-wise as well. And by 2027, with catchment areas running low, water rationing?

In this desperate situation just when the people are getting down to the familiar belt-tightening measures, what are the government’s priorities? There are the anomalous announcements by the government of two starkly wasteful defence deals worth $53 billion. Of this sum the Dassault Company of France is pocketing $43 billion for 114 obsolete 4.5 generation Rafale fighter aircraft (that by this combat plane’s end-phase could end up costing the country upwards of $100 billion at current value), and the German firm Thyssen-Krupp Marine Systems (TKMS) another $10 billion for six HDW 214NG diesel submarines — the de-rated export version of the advanced HDW 212 in service with the Kriegsmarine (German navy). And the Indian army not be left behind has underway a huge T-72 modernisation programme!

The difference is while Dassault has refused to part with sensitive source codes, the Indian government has said it’d be satisfied minimally with just the ability to integrate Indian designed weapons and avionics encased in the Interface Control Document (ICD). The ICD manages the communications between sensors, weapons, Electronic warfare and other on-board packages. But the French refuse to transfer even this, knowing fully well that the IAF, longtime on their hook, will prevail with the Modi government, and they’ll have India buy the Rafale with no pretence at tech transfer. Meaning, the threats issued by the defence ministry that without the ICD Delhi would walk away from the deal, are fake, all noora kushti! And that Modi is going to hand France the sort of monies it needs to invest in the development of its 6th generation aircraft (Système de Combat Aérien du Futur). (The programme to produce such an aircraft jointly with Germany and Spain, has fallen through because of the French reluctance to share source codes. So at least, Paris is consistent!)

Germany has agreed to transfer all technology of the HDW 214 for the ironically named Project 75India, because there will be nothing Indian in it! Indeed, the French Naval Group that had competed for this same deal, offering a slightly advanced variant of the Scorpene already in the Indian fleet, was upset with TKMS for agreeing to offer India the source codes, arguing that this would only set up another competitor (like TKMS did with South Korea and Turkey)! But Original Equipment manufacturers need not worry, this is the Indian miltary they are dealing with — they will talk atmnirbharta all the government wants but when it comes to putting down money, they will jump at any rinky-dink item any Western firm produces, and it is the Indian government they are dealing with, which believes in subsidising innovation in foreign countries and upkeeping Western defence industries, and not in backing Indian talent and industry! That’s atmnirbharta in practice.

The problem is these defence purchases, especially of the Rafale is problematic in the main because manned aircraft are, modern warfare-wise, already EXTINCT. Surely, the Indian air force, navy and army are not unaware of the lessons from their very own Op Sindoor experience a year ago when it was proved beyond contention that it is the system (defensive in India’s case, and offensive in Pakistan’s) that matters, NOT the weapons platform. The outcomes of the Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles hitting targets in Pakistan on May 7 would have been the same with Tejas firing it rather than the immensely more expensive Rafale or Mirage 2000. For God’s sake, an escorted Airbus A320 rigged up to trigger a Brahmos from well within Indian territory would have had the same results! And it was the integrated Indian air defence system of radars and SAMs of varying range and anti-aircraft guns that on May 7-9 kept out Pakistani missiles. And it was the arrangement — the system — of the Pakistani JC-10 operating in radio silence, firing the Chinese P-15Es A2A missiles from within home airspace and directed to targets by the Swedish Erieye airborne warning and control system that surprised and shot down, sequentially, an IAF Rafale, MiG 29, and Su-30MKI. These aspects were mentioned in my blog posts from that time.

But if their own experience counts for nothing, perhaps, the Indian armed services can pick-up pointers from the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian drone and autonomous weapons systems are playing havoc with the Russian forces in the Donbas region. The cheap, compact but lethal Ukrainian drones brought the mighty Russian army’s mechanised/armoured columns to a grinding halt, compelled Moscow to ground its frontal aviation, even damaging/destroying a third of the Russian strategic air force — some thirteen Tu-22M3 bombers parked on the flight lines in widely separated bases, with daring day-time raids (on youtube for all to see!), and sank several major surface combatants, including the flagship, Moskva, and a conventional submarine anchored in Sevastopol, such that now the Russian Black Sea Fleet survives only in name.

Nearer home, a tough and resolute Iran absorbed all that the US threw at it and then proceeded to have its way in the Hormuz in the face of a stalled American military effort. It is attacks by the Iranian Shahed-136 drones and long range missiles hitting Saudi refineries and the main LNG processing plant in Qatar, that led to the regional oil economies shutting down and the Gulf states pressuring the US to end the fight. To add insult to American injury, the most advanced US nuclear powered aircraft carrier, Gerald Ford, stationed off Israel, was hit by Iranian missiles and quickly retreated to the safety of Greece or some such faraway place, off-theatre, for “repairs”.

And, by way of hard currency outgo, there’s the $500 billion worth of goods Modi-Jaishankar have agreed to buy from the US — a promise the visiting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio extracted from them last week. Of course, international economics doesn’t work this way, but just add the costs of the Rafale and TKMS contracts plus $500 billion in buying something, anything from the US, and soon India’s reserves will look like Pakistan’s.

In the context of a sinking Indian economy and a generally bad international political scene that Delhi apparently is unable to get a handle on, the Modi regime has nowhere explained why the country is being thus beggared, why such extraordinary expenditures on Rafale and HDW 214 are considered necessary, and why the IAF and Indian navy are being indulged when more economical, indigenous, alternatives are available and known to the Defence Ministry (and detailed in my books and writings, and in posts on this blog).

What can India do with the $53 billion that will be saved by junking the Rafale and HDW deals?

So, one more time, I will outline the alternatives that will spur defence industrial growth in the country and ought to be the solution. Rather than peddling license-produced products to the Global South, with this solution defence minister Rajnath Singh will be in a postion soon to crow about genuinely Indian designed and produced armaments and weaponry in foreign militaries.

Rafale is entirely redundant to need, and India and the IAF would be better off without it. If aircraft are mere launchers of weapons from safe, standoff range — which in truth is all that manned aircraft my be called on to do in the future, then Tejas — exactly the same 4.5 generation aircraft as the exorbitantly-priced Rafale, is fine. It may be prudent, however, to accelerate the manufacture of Tejas Marks 1A and 2 by asking the private sector firms tasked with producing the advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA) to set up assemly lines to roll out the Tejas variants for IAF use and export. It will thus be an integrated programme to develop and showcase wholly indigenous aerospace talent and technologies for incorporation into drones of all types for all aerial missions, and into space-based systems (for sub-orbital warfare, for instance).

But this won’t happen.

In the event, the inescapable conclusion is that IAF and those in the government supporting the Rafale deal are doing so with the intent to kill off the Tejas-AMCA line, as they did in the mid-1970s when they approved buying the British Jaguar aircraft and finished off the home-grown HF-71/72 multi-role combat aircraft. Because where’s the money to payoff foreign companies and financially support Tejas and AMCA? The Jaguar deal was struck during the Morarji Desai-led Janata Party interregnum (following Indira Gandhi’s Emergency) and the commissions and the loot in train were parceled out to everyone in the procurement loop, a major portion of it going to the then defence minister, Jagjivan Ram (proof of which was published, incidentally, in the Surya magazine edited by Maneka Gandhi, presently the BJP MP from Sultanpur!)

And because DRDO and DPSUs have proven limitations — inefficient, ineffective, low labour productivity and with a long record of bringing NO project they undertake in on time and within cost, it is time for a profusion of new companies manned by young and eager tech innovators to be given the opportunity to lead the design and development efforts and for the private sector majors (Tata, L&T, Godrej Aerospace, Mahindra Aerospace, Bharat Forge, et al) to compete on a commercial-penalty basis with the DPSUs to manufacture the new, freshly Indian designed armaments incorporating every new technology our innovators can think up, and realise. That way lies “MADE in India” and a true atmnirbhar Bharat.

Re: HDW 214. Yes, Indian submariners exult at the metallurgy and structural engineering that permitted the HDW 209 in service still to pull off steep dives and quick ascents from the depths without a creak! But that was in the 1990s. Today, L&T can produce micron tolerances to weld together titanium double-hulled nuclear-powered ballistic missile firing submarines (SSBNs). In fact, it is precisely such capabilities that make nonsense of the navy’s claim that India’s hand needs to be held by Germans in Project 75i. To repeat for the umpteenth time, the preferred course should be for the navy to just buy the design for the HDW 214, and certain select technologies, like optronic masts, etc. from anywhere — tech the country lacks. L&T has the capacity to convert a design into an engineering plan and proceed with the project. According to industry sources, India could buy the HDW 214 design for a mere Rs 500 cr instead of coughing up Rs 70,000 cr for the entire package, when most of the technologies in it are already in the country. Further, the NG (New Generation) in the name is there because of the German Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system for longer endurance. Except the AIP system designed by DRDO and jointly developed with L&T and already successfully shore-tested, is actually in the same timeframe per estimated use schedule as the German one that will be affixed on the 214. Meaning, an Indian sub could go out to sea with the indigenous AIP system in the time the HDW 214 begins its production run here. Buying the whole German package means India buying technology the country already possesses, as already stated. Does that make sense? With respect to the select technologies, secure it from foreign vendors, but this time begin by reverse engineering these items right away. Contract upcoming engineering firms for the reverse engineering tasks.

Is it anybody’s case that L&T cannot weld together technology-wise the far simpler conventional sub when it is producing the immensely more complex SSBN systems at a clip? How come so straightforward and obvious a take on indigenous tech-industrial capability is not evident to the Indian Navy or, worryingly, the Indian Defence Ministry and the Indian government????

And, in any case, how is the above path not preferable to India, in fact, remaining a perennial arms dependency?

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Islamic countries, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, satellites, society, South Asia, space & cyber, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons, Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 43 Comments

India will pay $68 billion to US to become a nuclear dependency

Posted on May 22, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

Marco Rubio is the go-to guy for the US President. Not only is he the US Secretary of State, but he has three other roles heaped on him by Donald Trump — National Security Adviser, Administrator of the now all but defunct U.S. Agency for International Development and, it is not clear why, Head of the National Archives! Rubio will be in India for three days starting tomorrow (May 23-26), and ambassador Sergio Gor has drawn up a schedule that will take him to major cities where he will have Indian capitalists and industrialists and their hangers-on fawn over him, ready to invest in and otherwise make America even richer!

In equal measure spooked, intimidated, and pressured by Trump, Indian corporations, desirous of retaining whatever small foothold they have in the US market, have felt compelled to buy into his “America First” in-shoring policy, meaning moving global industrial and manufacturing capacity to the US. To-date, Indian companies have collectively invested over $331.23 billion in the US to put up factories and generate employment, adding to America’s wealth and wellbeing, and to its industrial and economic heft.

This vast tranche of transferred Indian wealth breaks down as follows: $300 billion by Reliance Industries, $19.1 billion by the Indian pharmaceutical sector, $10 billion by the Adani Group, $900 million by the Abhyuday Group, $773 million by the Tata Group, $255 million by Jindal Group (JSW Steel), $100 million by Sterlite Technologies, another $87 million by Jindal Group proper, and $15 million by Jivo Wellness. [These figures are taken from an article by Navroop Singh and Nimja Parekh, “Predatory Economics: The Reality of America First” published in their consistently thoughtful and excellent Blog — Niti-Shastra on the Substack platform, which carries their well-researched and devastating critiques. The URL for this particular article is https://nitishastra.substack.com/p/predatory-economics-the-reality-of ]

Let’s be clear that India will be poorer by the $331.23 billion invested in the US — monies that are now not available to build the much needed infrastructure and to set up factories, create jobs at home, and generally to economically better India. This is zero-sum transactionalism, which would be fine had the Modi government adopted it as its policy to gain comparative advantage, rather than have Trump impose it on India to benefit America. Sure there’s no dearth of NRI types in the Washington Beltway commending Modi’s show of restraint in the face of unending provocations offered him personally and to the country in economic and other terms by Trump, especially since Sindoor. But the hope the PMO and MEA nursed since then that a subdued Delhi would win it better treatment from Washington has, once again, been proved very wrong.

Trump is a professional New York real estate wheeler-dealer who does not waste his time on property he cannot acquire, to polish up, turnaround and sell for profit. Likewise, he has moved on from India and Narendra Modi as I mentioned in my previous posts. In the region, he has found Asim Munir and the Pakistani state he runs far more congenial to augment his personal/family holdings (bitcoin) and US interests (Pasni as US naval/air base, minerals in Reko Diq and other places in Baluchistan, middle man with Iran). Because however much Modi wishes to cuddle up to Trump and accommodate the US, there is a limit beyond which he cannot. Munir faces no such systemic constraint.

So, what’s Delhi to do? Particularly because Messrs Modi & Jaishankar are sold on the notion that Trump after having his jollies with humilating India and taking the PM down several notches, will come around to giving the Indian leader a hand in warding off the Indian middle class pressure to keep open a channel for skilled labour outflows and, that the promise of a Free Trade Agreeent will soften his tariff stance. But Trump was Trump. He brought down the 50% tariff rate to 25% on Indian exports only because of the US Supreme Court verdict, but shuttered up the H1B visa window. And he dispatched Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, and Under Secretary of Defence Elbridge Colby, to tell folks here where Modi and India stand with him.

In the event, these officials wasted no time in unsugaring the bitter pill, telling anybody in Lutyen’s Delhi who cared to listen that India should expect NO US favours, nor help and technological assistance, or any other consideration above and beyond any other country America deals with, and certainly nothing that’d boost India’s chances vis a vis China — a threshold, Landau warned, that would instantly trigger responses befitting a rival and competitor. But, that Trump nevertheless expects, as Colby stressed, India to “cooperate” in its own interests with the US in militarily restraining China, even as the US president butters up Xi Jinping for a separate deal with Beijing that will push Taiwan, and other Asian states, including India, into the line of Chinese fire.

So, what is the Modi regime planning to do when, starting tomorrow, it has Rubio’s undivided attention? Why, presenting him, as the media has reported, with a plan to revive the nuclear industry in the United States, of course! The plan is to encourage American companies to sell commercial nuclear reactors worth some $68 billion (Rs 6.5 lakh crores) to India, which can take its pick from light water, gas cooled, molten sodium, and modular reactors in small, medium and large sizes! These electricity generating nuclear plants are to be “joint ventures”. To attract US firms, the Indian government passed an enabling legislation — the 2025 SHANTI (Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India) Act. It supercedes, essentially gets around, the “liability” barrier in the 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act of Parliament, that had kept out foreign vendors.

The two Acts differ majorly in two crucial respects: In Section 17(b) of the 2010 Law, operators were allowed to sue reactor suppliers for defective equipment or latent faults in reactor and related technologies that could result in explosions, fire and reactor core meltdown. SHANTI Act removes automatic technology supplier liability, with legal recourse limited to “explicit contracts or wilful misconduct”. And, as regards victim compensation, Section 46 in the 2010 Act which “allowed victims to additionally sue operators under other civil or criminal laws”, is entirely absent from the SHANTI Act, leaving victims with only restricted means of financial redressal.

(As an aside, I remember deposing before the Parliamentary Committee drafting the 2010 Act and arguing for the strictest liability provisions and for a clause enabling the victims to separately sue the operators. In a somewhat heated interaction with MPs I apparently said something that so incensed a legislator from Bihar, he created a ruckus, threatening to invoke a privilege motion against me for breaching the dignity of the House!)

The reason liability provisions need to be a deterrent is to ensure that the safest possible nuclear technology is deployed for commercial use. This is especially important in the context of the three nuclear reactor mishaps the world has so far seen. In March 1979, there was coolant leakage in one of the units of the nuclear energy plant in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, but the disaster was contained, and no deaths occurred, though the cleanup, etc cost upwards of $1 billion. The leakage was attributed to design flaws. People living around the nuclear complex in Chernobyl, Ukraine, were not so lucky in April 1986. The reactor core meltdown from leakage of the coolant resulted, according to the UN, in 4,000 long-term deaths in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, and 6,000 deaths across Europe and, per a report by the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, cost some $85 billion in nuclear rehabilitation and over $700 billion in all — “the most expensive disaster in history”. The earthquake and tsunami induced nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan led to grid failure and the electric backup to cool the reactor failed, leading to breach in containment and the spread of “radioactive contaminants”. The clean-up cost $70 billion, and decontamination of the environment, and compensation to the people, cost $188 billion!

This to say that even a minor nuclear disaster has quite considerable human and infrastructure cost, and anything major can financially ruin a country. That is the reason why the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was extra-careful in assessing the Westinghouse AP1000 light water reactor technology, holding up its certification for many years on account of safety concerns. Early this year, the reactor design was finally certified. But no such certification has so far been given by the US NRC to any gas cooled or molten sodium nuclear reactor design or prototype, and to only only one model of modular water cooled reactor, that America is peddling.

With minimal liability, it is little wonder the US industry wallahs are exulting. The trouble is while the US reactor sales may enhance India’s nuclear energy capacity, none of the reactor technologies on offer are certified by US NRC for safety. In other words, India, in effect, is presenting itself to the US industry as a live laboratory, and Indians as guinea pigs, to test the functional safety of the reactors, their performance in India becoming the basis for these American companies to erect them in America!

This is called a “win-win situation” by Nolty Theriot, Senior Vice President, US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF).

But in money terms this means adding another $68 billion of India’s wealth to the $331-odd billion already transferred to Trump’s America by Reliance, Adani, Tata, Jindal, et al. That is a total of $400 BILLION of Indian wealth which is now US’!!

And like the $28 billion, that would be wasted on the Rafale combat aircraft and benefit France, leaving no monies for developing the indigenous Tejas line of aircraft — 1A, 2, AMCA, into a world class fighter line, the $68 billion spent on untested and uncertified American nuclear reactors, could instead be invested in the three distinct locally designed and developed reactor streams — CANDU, breeder reactor and thorium (molten sodium).

If Modi is so keen to triple the Indian civilian nuclear energy capacity — from some 9,000MW to nearly 30,000MW, he could do the following: Challenge Rubio and the USISPF to have American companies rifle up the entire $68 billion in the US stock market to build and operate nuclear power stations in India under their control with absolute guarantee of repatriating all profits. That way, US industry will be invested in India, and the Indian government will conserve the country’s financial, human and natural resources to design, develop and build uniquely Indian lines of natural uranium, plutonium and thorium reactors, which it can do considering the country has mastery over all three fuel cycles — one of only 3-4 countries to do so.

This is the only way for India to escape becoming a nuclear dependency of the US because, as per the 2008 civilian nuclear cooperation act, the fuel for the imported American reactors will have to be periodically imported from the US, and which supply can be stopped/disrupted at will, at any time for any reason, that Washington can think up. If these reactors are owned by US power companies, however, the US government will be more considerate in imposing sanctions, say. And with a regular supply of US fuel assured, these firms can be permitted profitably to run a chain of nuclear power plants in India in a closed loop.

This is win-win!!! And the only way to even the terms of exchange, Modiji. Or, prepare to have India continue to be exploited and booted around by Trump and the US.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indo-Pacific, MEA/foreign policy, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Russia, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons | Tagged , , , , | 37 Comments

An RSS turn on the India-Pakistan Front

Posted on May 18, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Hosabale and the Prime Minister]

Dattatreya Hosabale, General Secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is in the news for suggesting that dialogue with Pakistan be resumed. The statement was met by hosannas from many quarters — other than the Wagah candlelighters, veterans of the Establishment and the like celebrating the event, and welcomed by Islamabad as a “positive call”. In a sense, it marked the approval by the RSS of the Track 2 meetings to-date — four of them since Op Sindoor between retired Indian and Pakistani generals and diplomats. Breaking the ice is never very difficult. Put any Indians and Pakistanis together for any reason and they get along like a house on fire! (Wrong metaphor?)

But this turn in Hosabale’s thinking reminds me of his visiting me at the Centre for Policy Research along with another RSS functionary, sometime between May 16, 2014, when the general election results were declared, and May 26 when Modi was sworn in. They did not reveal the reason for seeking the meeting. But because The Hindu — which likes to think of itself as the “newspaper of record”, had around then published an op-ed speculating the likely appointments in the new dispensation, and mentioned me by name as being considered for the post of “adviser, strategic affairs”, I surmised that Hosabale had scouted me. In the time spent with him, relations with Pakistan dominated the discussion.

I suspect I may have marred my prospects by saying that to conserve national resources for the fight against China, India needed to (1) obtain a pacified neighbourhood, including a friendly Pakistan, with a policy of economic inducements to bind adjoing states to the Indian economy — the first step for the country to attain genuine great power status, and (2) generate trust, in the main, with Pakistan without in the least imperilling national security by removing all nuclear missiles from the western border and rationalising the army’s three Strike Corps into a single composite Corps, and transferring the freed up assets to the China front. And I indicated, these steps in no way prevented India from taking punitive measures in PoK and against Pakistan for any terrorist incidents. These are themes I flogged for a long time. The army has done what I long counselled — hollowed out two of the Strike Corps by deploying their armoured and mechanised units to Ladakh.

Importantly, it is a good thing that the RSS and Hosabale apparently have rethought the value of a rapprochement with Pakistan, and the Indian government maybe rejigging its policy. After all Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his tenure by inviting to his swearing-in ceremony on May 26, 2014, the heads of governments of all adjacent states, including Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. And, a year later, he impulsively broke his return journey from Afghanistan, in Lahore, on December 25, 2015, travelled by road to Nawaz’s estate in Raiwind, partook of the PM’s grand daughter’s wedding and, on meeting her, touched Sharif’s mother’s feet — a gesture that, right there and then, sentimentally disarmed millions of Pakistanis.

It was then the ISI doubtless decided it had had enough of all the bhaichara stuff, and arranged for the terrorist attack in Pulwama on 14 February 2019, souring bilateral relations. The IAF launched a reprisal air raid on Balakot 12 days later. It is another matter that if the idea was to send a strong deterrent message to GHQ, Rawalpindi, the IAF erred by choosing the wrong tactics and weapon. It sent a single aircraft to fire Spice2000, an Israeli precision guided munition, rather than a squadron-strength IAF complement in waves dropping 500 pound bombs to deep-crater not just the Jaish-e-Mohammad training camp but to wipe out that entire hilltop for every satellite to pick up and the media to broadcast.

The ties went further south with the selective gunning down of Hindu tourists in Pahalgam on 23 April last year. This time, it was the Indian army’s turn to foul up. It missed the opportunity to exploit the air dominance achieved (with standoff missile strikes) by 0230 hrs on May 10, to snatch the Haji Pir Bulge. It’d have initiated a new strategy of territory for terrorism — hacking off parts of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for absorption into the Indian Union for every terrorist incident. The LoC being a ceasefire line, as General Parvez Musharraf reminded us many moons ago, international law allows either side to the dispute to change it by military means! Mindful of the military flubbing it on two successive occasions, Rajnath Singh and various generals on the Sindoor anniversary threatened more dire outcomes for Pakistan “agli baar”. That agli baar never comes.

Pakistani terrorism, although a nettlesome problem cannot be allowed, however, to cloud India’s meta-strategic goal of achieving unitary strategic space in South Asia and for the region to emerge as an extendable economic “co-prosperity sphere” that I have advocated. It is the only way for India to resolve the terrorism issue, and become a meaningful player on the world scene, and for South Asia to transform into a peaceful region. The country is too big to continue to be content with small fights and iffy successes.

Posted in Afghanistan, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Missiles, Pakistan, Pakistan military, satellites, society, Sri Lanka | Tagged , , , , | 35 Comments

The tragedy of missing the great opportunity in Sindoor.

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

On the Op Sindoor anniversary, much is made rightly of India’s air power prowess that laid Pakistan low a year ago. The standout performance of the Integrated Air Command and Control System — a complex of airborne and landbased radars and other sensors linked to ballistic and cruise missile batteries, drone systems and even the old time anti-aircraft guns, worked beautifully, in providing excellent situational awareness, and both an effective defensive shield and a base for the offensive punch, and ought justly to be celebrated.

The record of the Indian Air Force per se, however, was wanting on May 7, 2025 — when it flew blindly into an Erieye-J10-P15 ambush and lost 3 high value combat aircraft — a Rafale, a Mig-29 and a Su-30, dimming the performance of the Brahmos striking terrorist markazes in Muridke and Bahawalpur, but was stellar when on May 10th early morning missiles launched from standoff range and various platforms hit their mark. It made nonsense of Pakistan’s less than credible warnings over the past three decades of a nuclear strike in case India conventionally struck anything in its Punjab heartland.

But the occasion could have done with some serious pondering of the extraordinary missed opportunity on May 10th when, with air dominance achieved, the army could have, and should have, swung swiftly into action. Special Forces should have sliced off the Haji Pir Salient on the Uri-Poonch line, permitting infantry units, supported by armour and artillery, from the garrisons in Uri, Poonch and Mandi to converge on the Bulge to destroy Pakistani forces in the cauldron, and capture this piece of territory for good. It would have instantly shut down the main ISI channel for infiltrating terrorists into the Srinagar Valley, and shortened the Uri-Poonch link to just 60 kms (not the 260 km detour and lots of time it takes to go around the Salient).

The LOC’s ceasefire line status would, moreover, have endowed the Indian action with absolute legality and, more significantly, laid down a policy — and a warning to GHQ, Rawalpindi, habited by “Field Marshal” Asim Munir and his cohort, that any terrorist event that LeT or other jihadi elements staged in J&K or anywhere else in India would result — as certain as day follows night — in the cleaving off of large portions of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and their assimilation into the Indian Union, until nothing remained of POK but the name! It would have incentivised Islamabad to give up terrorism as an asymmetric means of wafare, and to formalise the international border on the new LOC.

But the army, CDS, Defence Ministry, GOI, whatever else they planned, they did not for cashing in on any opportunity to capture large parts of POK territory. So, in terms of planning a decisive war in the fortnight between April 22 — the day of the Pahalgam massacre and May 7, 2025 — D-Day for Op Sindoor, it was a wash. Instead, India jumped to comply with the first Pakistani request for a ceasefire that came its way on May 9th, when Indian forces were in a position to do virtually anything they wanted with regard to rearranging the Line of Control!

Incidentally, while the Indian armed forces planned for no contingency to take Haji Pir or anything else for that matter, just such an operation was outlined in my April 30, 2025 post — Capture of Haji Pir Salient and Skardu — eminently doable, is what the Indian military’s goals ought to be for the retaliatory actions — a whole week before the onset of Sindoor!! In its aftermath, the Defence Ministry and the military were left (and still are) justifying their reluctance to score really big by singing the virtues of “restraint” and “responsible” behaviour, and Rajnath Singh by issuing warnings of India doing more the next time around!

The Indian military’s intent on hewing strictly to the political directive, was fine. But surely, should it not, as self-respecting armed services, have nevertheless planned, prepared, and gotten the garrisons in Uri, Poonch and Mandi and other proximally situated forward units on the LOC ready to exploit any opportunity and, at a moment’s notice, to initiate a lightning fast operation to take Haji Pir, which was there for the taking?

Is it anybody’s case that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have upbraided the military and hauled up a general or two for DISOBEYING his express instructions and capturing Haji Pir? Few political leaders are Winston Churchills. They know less than nothing about military matters but will happily feast politically on any military successes that come their way. After all, when is an election not round the corner?! This basic fact of life is apparently not appreciated by the Indian military, which once again strove manfully to do little, and succeeded!

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indo-Pacific, Internal Security, Islamic countries, Military/military advice, Missiles, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Terrorism | Tagged , , , , | 74 Comments

The Benefit of Appointing non-Foreign Service persons as Ambassadors

Posted on April 20, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[MC Chagla with Senator John F Kennedy, likely 1958-59]

Today’s Hindustan Times story about the appointment of the BJP politician Dinesh Trivedi as High Commissioner to Bangladesh mentioned several interesting things of import to the conduct of Indian foreign policy in the future. It “sends a message of accountability” to Foreign Service officers, the report said, adding that Trivedi’s is only the first of such postings of “heavy weights to the neighbourhood”, indicating that “the era of an ambassador for good times is over”.

It is hard to read this story and not see it as a severe indictment of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), whose members, per this report, are manifestly not political or otherwise “heavyweights”, act as if not “accountable” to the political executive, and are in a diplomatic career mostly for “the good times”, in other words, to make whoopee!

But first the man: Trivedi is a workaday politician — of no great stature or accomplishment. But he was useful to the ruling party because of his past connections to Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee’s Trinamul Congress in West Bengal, and appointing him was a way of needling her. Met Trivedi once at a usual Delhi dinner party and all I heard, when I was within earshot, was of his glorious achievements as Railways Minister in Manmohan Singh’s government, when actually his greater success lies in jumping from party to political party, being yet another “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” of Indian politics. He doubtless speaks Bangla bhasha, and has an appetite for Hilsa fish to match. But that’s not why Indian diplomacy may be looking up!

Trivedi’s prospective High Commissionership suggests the Modi dispensation is finally becoming more imaginative in its diplomatic outlook and practice. It was reported somewhere that the veteran journalist, M.J. Akbar, was also in the running for this job. It’s a pity he didn’t make it. As a dyed-in-the-wool Bihari, an eloquent Bangla speaker, and an ardent Indian nationalist, Akbar would have opened up lines of communications among other sections of the Bangladeshi society, to the mostly Bihar-origin Muslims labelled “Pakistani” — victims of a double Partition, who eke out an existence on the margins, and would have made for a more effective plenipotentiary. You never know whom India might need in a crisis on our eastern flank!

I venture the view, entirely without evidence, that this positive turn in Indian diplomatic method happened despite, and not because, of a retired Foreign Secretary as External Affairs Minister (EAM).

But this is not so much an innovation as a return to the early days after Independence when Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister and concurrently EAM, barring the nepotistic appointments of his sister Vijayalakshmi Pandit as ambassador successively in Washington, London, and Moscow, none of the public figures heading the embassy in Washington, MC Chagla during Nehru’s time, and later Nani Palkivala during the Morarji interregnum apart, were particularly distinguished or shone as India’s representative. But Nehru established the principle of Indian diplomatic presence in major countries being helmed by political appointees. However, he failed to sustain this policy because the first Director-General of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Girija Shankar Bajpai, prevailed on the Prime Minister to permit ICS/IFS to occupy the ambassadorial posts.

Political appointees are politically connected and personally known to the Prime Minister appointing them, as career diplomats are not. This makes a difference in how and with what commitment the PM’s agenda is furthered — something careerist diplomats schooled in hierarchical interaction and bureaucratic processes, cannot do. This is, perhaps, what is referred to in the news story as lack of “accountability” of the IFS. The political appointee knows that his job is co-terminus with the PM’s — a tremendous incentive to realise as much of the PM’s policy as possible in as small a period of time as possible.

The careerist, however, feels no urgency because the next posting awaits, may be as, Foreign Secretary! Jaishankar did it! Of late, this direction has been reversed; the trend now being to install a retiring Foreign Secretary as ambassador in Washington. Presently, Vinay Kwatra is holding fort who, the talk is, will be replaced by his successor and current FS, Vikram Misri. But if Kwatra has apparently disappointed because he was unable to trigger a Trump rapprochement with Modi, can Misri be expected to fare any better? After all, what inducements can be offered a person who made it to FS, and then ambassador to the US to excel? And more, it is not as if any careerist IFS officer has any intimate knowledge or familiarity of the social milieu he is operating in, in Washington, or that the Indian ambassador has any special reach to the top echelons of the “plum book” political appointees in any given Administration. And there’s the rub!

On the other hand, a Chagla or a Palivala did have a social reach into the American policy Establishment, into the rarefied Georgetown circles. The IFS man, KS Bajpai, in the mid-1980s did to an extent too because he successfully mined his schoolboy past in the elite St Alban’s school in Washington when his father, Girija Shankar Bajpai, of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), was Churchill’s “political agent” in the wartime Washington of the 1940s and, as such, advanced the British PM’s agenda of blunting the pressure by US President Franklin Roosevelt on London to immediately confer independence on India. Roosevelt felt that an independent India would more enthusiastically partake of the Allied war effort. In the event, Churchill, thanks to Bajpai, won out!

Not to go into that controversial part of MEA history (which is detailed in the book I am writing), but in major Indian embassies, this is the score of political appointees as ambassadors compared to ICS/IFS types who have hogged all significant ambassadorial posts. In the US, of the 29 Indian ambassadors so far, only 7 were non-careerists; in the Soviet Union/Russia of the 25 ambassadors, only 6; in China of the 27, only 2; in the UK of the 30 High Commisioners, 12; in France all ambassadors were ICS/IFS; and of the 27 High Commissioners/Chargé d’affaires to-date in Pakistan only 2-3 were non-careerists.

No country has proven the positives of political appointees as ambassadors than the United States. Of the 37 US ambassadors/Chargé d’affaires in Delhi since April 1947, 18 were/are political appointees. Notable among them being Chester Bowles, Congressman & Governor of Connecticut; Sherman Cooper — US senator; Ellsworth Bunker, businessman & US President Truman’s confidante; the economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the sociologist, Daniel Moynihan, both Harvard professors; Kenneth Keating US Senator; William Saxbe US Attorney General; Robert Goheen president of Princeton University; John Hubbard, president of the University of Southern California, Frank Celeste, Governor of Ohio, Robert Blackwill Senior adviser to President George W Bush, David Mulford — investment banker and international president of Credit Suisse, Tim Roemer Member of the 9/11 Commission, Richard Verma, assistant secretary of state, Kevin Juster, international head of global investment firm Warburg Pincus, Eric Garcetti – Mayor of Los Angeles (2nd largest city in the US), and now, Sergei Gore — senior adviser to President Trump.

Little wonder the Indian government has been awed, even overwhelmed when dealing with such politically well connected US ambassadors, and why America has always had an out-sized impact and influence on Indian foreign policy and the government’s decisionmaking generally! Because as political appointees they can and often do make end-runs around the US State Department, and speed things up by talking directly with the US President.

It was because politial appointees are in a position to get things done with access to the boss back home in mind that I recall pleading with political bigwigs in Delhi in the 1980s for the appointment of Nusli Wadia as the Indian ambassador to Washington. The Pakistani embassy in the US then, as always, had success with its narrative, what with its special line to the Pentagon and the White House. Islamabad profited hugely from trumpeting, among other things, the alleged mistreatment by the Indian government of the Muslim minority in the country, etc.

My point simply was this: Appoint Nusli Wadia, head of Bombay Dyeing Company and, incidentally, the grandson of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, as the Indian ambassador in Washington, and instantly see the Pakistani embassy shrink and the ambassador shut up. Wadia installed in the embassy at Massachusetts Avenue would have dampened the Pakistan embassy’s ardour for creating a ruckus, affording India the diplomatic edge it has never had in dealings with the US.

Naturally, my pleas went in one ear and out the other!

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, China, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indo-Pacific, Internal Security, MEA/foreign policy, Pakistan, Russia, society, South Asia, United States, US., Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 50 Comments

India won’t run the US blockade, what will it do?

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Manoeuvring Indian warships]

Admiral Arun Prakash is among the more thoughtful military Chiefs of Staff the country has had. The other day he addressed the problem created by Iran asserting its leverage and setting up what’s virtually a toll booth in the Hormuz Strait. He posed the issue correctly, in an op-ed (“The strait of high stakes, where law and leverage collide”, Indian Express, April 11, 2026), as involving a clash between maritime history, convention and law supporting freedom of navigation (and hence international trade and commerce, etc.) and a coastal state’s imperative to close a strategic waterway in war and attendant crisis. Given the economic stakes for India — the potential pinching of its “jugular vein”, and its good relations with all the protagonists in this edition of the Gulf War — US, Israel, and Iran, he voiced his incomprehension at the Modi government avoiding a mediator role that Pakistan grabbed.

But, the good admiral shied away from tackling the harder issue about whether the Indian Navy would risk asserting the country’s maritime right to ply the Hormuz waters in defiance of Tehran’s closing it other than for a consideration ($2 million per vessel as transit fee) and, in the process, its ships possibly braving an Irani strike. Tactfully, he recommended “quiet diplomacy”, something right up S Jaishankar’s street!

Prakash’s view that India’s being in good standing with the three combatant powers somehow conferred on New Delhi the status of mediator is questionable. In the main because Bharat sarkar is yet to recover from the trauma of the US President Donald Trump gleefully and repeatedly rubbing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nose in the dirt (on Sindoor, as recently as three-four weeks ago) and otherwise displaying disdain for India (while Munir and Pakistan luxuriate in the praise that Trump and recently US Vice President JD Vance heaped on them for their peace efforts). And, more pertinently, because Pakistan’s diplomatic position as caretaker of Irani interests in America since 1979, to say nothing of the shared border, the Islam factor, and its close ties to China (which supplied Iran with arms and intelligence), had Islamabad in a better place anyway for mediation.

The Admiral’s op-ed appeared before Trump announced a US blockade of what is virtually an Iranian blockade! But the former development compounds India’s problem. It is clear though that Delhi does not think the Indian Navy is capable of running the US blockade and safely escorting Indian oil/LNG carriers through the Hormuz Narrows, or of risking engagements with either or both the US and Irani forces, because of the uncertainty over Indian movements being deemed “hostile passage”, reacting badly. This is a conclusion reached because any inclination on the part of the government to order Indian warships to escort Indian flagged vessels through the Strait proper — not as is being done to-date of escorting ships once they reach the open sea, would have been reflected in Prakash’s piece.

Trump, according to many, has painted himself and the US into a corner by imposing a blockade with some 26-odd warships and ancillaries — not enough for a leak-proof barrier. What isn’t clear is how stiffly or loosely the blockade will be conducted. But what is certain, given its past record of diffidence, is that Delhi will curl up deeper in its shell, and do nothing even as the energy and urea flows from the Gulf states and Iran — the lifelines for the Indian economy and agriculture, stay severed. Sure, MEA will have its people go off hither and yon, instruct its embassies everywhere to scour the diverse markets for any excess oil and fertiliser and, of course, such forays will meet with some success as New Delhi waggles $ under everyone’s noses.

In the context of institutionalised Indian inaction, it is curious CNS, Admiral Dinesh Tripathi, called a three day “apex level” conference starting yesterday involving naval theatre commanders and such, but to discuss what, exactly? News stories trumpeting the conference were opaque on this issue, with an Indian Navy statement that talked of this and that and a whole bunch of issues relating to the Service. The only relevant mention in it referred to the significance of the Meet “in the light of swift naval deployments to safeguard India’s energy security, amidst the ongoing conflict in West Asia with convergence of multi-national forces (MNFs) in the Indian Ocean Region.” It would appear from this that the FOCINCs are NOT mulling independent IN actions to force the two blockades — the seaward one by the US, and the landbased one by Iran, but rather seeking to join in some kind of MNF effort.

The collectivist approach as cover, I suspect, is the Modi government’s way of avoiding taking America or Iran head-on, and is based on the hope that China, perhaps, will take the lead, do the heavy lifting. Because unlike Delhi, Beijing has formally rejected the US blockade, asserting its right to trade independent of US restrictions with any country in the Gulf it pleases, including Iran. In effect, Xi Jinping is daring Trump to stop Chinese-flagged oilers mid-sea, have American sailors board the vessels, and sequester the vessels. As a former commander of the naval element in the US Central Command, Admiral John Miller, wondered if the US “would want to force that blockade against Indian and Chinese-flagged vessels, for example” especially if “they bring a warship as an escort [for protection because]”, he warned, that that would amount to a casus belli (cause for war) and America would be “into a different scenario”.

The Indian government’s standard risk-averse attitude, however, has ruled out the Indian Navy’s running the blockade solo, even though, as Miller indicated, it would have created a dilemma for the US Navy of getting tactically embroiled with its Indian counterpart. It cannot be that Modi and Jaishankar were unaware that India could have got away with running the US blockade because of what was at stake for Washington — the four foundational accords — GSOMIA, LEMOA, COMCASA and BECA the two countries signed that permit US forces to use Indian military bases and other resources, like on-shore provisioning and repair services, etc.

But the specific problem for India is this: Trump is politically damaged — always the butt of incessant public ridicule at home and abroad, he is now subjected to scorn and derision as well not least because Iran, despite a sustained US-Israeli aerial bombardment campaign that resulted in enormous destruction, remained unbowed and because, as a commentator said about the peace parleys in Islamabad, without winning the war, America cannot set the terms of peace. And Tehran’s standing up to him, moreover, has put him in a bind and thrashing around for some face saving way out. Trump’s mood cannot be any darker also because the man he modeled himself and his MAGA politics on, the autocratic Viktor Orban, lost his shirt in the general elections in Hungary.

It is precisely why a frustrated Trump could hit out, and the blockade is his gambit to show the world he can seriously unsettle it. On the other side, the Pasdaran-dominated Iran is just as determined to make the Hormuz energy traffic profitable. In this situation, Modi is relying on Jaishankar’s dormouse policy of giving offence to no one and attempting diplomatically to ease past the two blockades by negotiating free passage from both sides for its carriers. So far, Indian ships have been allowed transit by Iran on a case-by-case basis and without having to pay the toll. But the log jam of ships on either side of the narrows is such, it will be a long time before the situation returns to normal. Whether or not Delhi succeeds in easing the passage for Indian bottoms, the country is staring at oil and urea shortages and the cascading ill-effects in train on its economy.

If the status quo continues and the blockades hold for any length of time, Modi may be compelled to choose between making enemies of Tehran and alienating Washington. Upsetting the Trump Administration appears the better choice because America, in order to realise its policy strategically to contain China cannot do without India, and Delhi can use the enormous leverage it has of threatening to trash the foundational accords to get what it wants, while Iran can, strictly speaking, do without India as it is not existentially necessary for Tehran to have Delhi on its side.

Except Trump has time and again proved that an always cowering Modi and India can be humiliated without cost to the US, and that the BJP regime with a foreign policy prizing the America connection, will not exercise the heavy leverage it has. Because Trump feels free to take India and the Modi regime for granted, and his ambassador, Sergio Gor, to shout from the rooftops that all the US really cares about is not trade, even less US technology transfer that Messers Modi and Jaishankar daydream about, but rather to use India’s location and military assets and resources in the Indo-Pacific against China. Not tightening this tourniquet against Trump also means that Delhi is prepared to sacrifice its Russia links and the North-South connectivity project enabling Indian trade to access Afghanistan and Central Asia and Europe through the Irani port of Chabahar, conceived to rival China’s BRI and maritime Silk Route.

The irony is that Trump, as is his wont, will likely cut a separate deal with Chinese President Xi whenever they meet, and Tehran will try and win Beijing’s goodwill as well by allowing China’s oiler fleet safe passage, leaving a “sad sack” India, as usual, flumoxed and flailing simply because it does not have the will effectively to prosecute its policy of “strategic autonomy” that it formally swears by.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Iran and West Asia, Islamic countries, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, United States, US., Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 45 Comments

Why India is not strategic minded

Posted on April 11, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

India’s Defence Strategy, Marut & Tejas Programs, Air Power & China Challenge | Bharat Karnad

Those interested in the larger subject of India’s not being strategic-minded may want to listen in on this podcast (hosted by Ravi Kapur). [Alert: I misspoke on Tipu Sultan’s defeat at Seringapatna as on the Krishna River, it is the Kaveri River!]

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indo-Pacific, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, Tibet, United States, US., Vietnam, war & technology, Weapons, West Asia, Western militaries | 43 Comments

India the big loser in the US-Iran War

Posted on April 1, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[The embarked 31st US Marine Expeditionary Brigade on ships nearing the Persian Gulf]

As predicted in my March 10 post — “America preparing to cut and run from Iran“, the US is in fact getting the hell out of the Gulf War. This prediction required no talent for prophesy, just a scan of America’s war record of the last 50 years! 2-3 weeks is what US President Trump is giving himself to wrap things up and call it a day. Because, he claims, he has won the war, “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability, installed a new regime in Tehran. Really, no. The world has wisened up to Trump’s foreign policy by bluff, bullying, lies, exaggeration and hyperbole. The American consumer staring at $4 a gallon fuel is the domestic political reason why the US is upping stakes and vamoosing. It proves my point that Americans have no stomach for war, especially when remote fighting — push a button from an aircraft at 20,000 feet here, destroy a target hundreds of miles away there, is insufficient and the situation calls for transitioning to “boots on the ground”. That means bodybags and the political end of the US President of the day! So, Trump says Bye! Bye! to the Gulf leaving UAE and Riyadh pleading for the US to finish the job of replacing the Ayatollahcracy with a more amenable regime. No go, Abdul!

Trump, moreover, with his unique talent for making enemies of close friends, alienated the Gulf states by not providing them with an impenetrable air defence cover that was promised, and the next thing they knew was everybody running for shelter as Iranian missiles slammed arbitrarily into their military bases with American presence and into skyscrapers making the Dubai, Doha and Qatar skylines a liability for the emirs and sheikhs who saw their tall buildings fall, high-flying international residents flee, businesses consider re-location, and the reputations particularly of UAE and Saudi Arabia as safe havens for fun & investment, crater.

Even as the Pasdaran (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) counter-attacked, Trump crowed that the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Salman, would have to “kiss my ass” for help, saying this at a meeting in his Florida White House at Mar-a-lago of Saudi and UAE Sovereign Fund managers who Trump expects will invest billions of dollars in the US and save his political skin! Such crassness from Trump is par for the course because he publicly talked of American bombs raining down on Iran as “beating the shit out of” it! But it will cost America. Salman is no fool and will not take this public insult sitting down. The Saudi and UAE wealth is unlikely to be invested in America.

The European NATO allies who mock Trump as an arriviste and can barely keep the contempt they feel for him under check, refused to enter the war as demanded by him by deploying naval escorts for tankers plying the Strait of Hormuz, and went further. The Leftist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez closed Spain’s airspace to US Air Force planes flying to the Gulf theatre, an action quickly replicated by the Giorgia Meloni regime in Italy and by President Macron of France, who earlier had damned US air strikes against Iran as “unilateral”. Poland then followed by refusing to send one of its Patriot air defence systems to the Gulf as requested by Washington. The Starmer government in the UK did not say no to Trump but is making haste so slowly that by the time the Royal Navy aircraft carrier finally reaches the Gulf the operational need for it will have evaporated — Whitehall’s point! Trump reacted with a post on Truth Social: “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT. You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” Unlike the US President, the European leaders are no idiots, and the “just take it” approach of colonial times will be hard to sustain.

To compound the frustrating situation for the US, the Houthis fired a missile at an American target, promising more fully to get into action. So Trump is looking at a two-punch economic disaster looming for the American and the world economies: the two most critical energy seaways are getting shut down — the Hormuz Strait by Iran, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (and the Red Sea-Suez route) by the Houthis. And to crown the developments, the US military suffered major hardware losses yesterday – Iranian drone hits blew up an American E-3 AWACS (airborne warning and control system) and several KC-135 refuellers, when these large aircraft were being readied for sorties at the Prince Sultan Base in Saudi Arabia. This is not to mention an alleged Iranian missile strike against the most advanced US aircraft carrier, USS Gerald Ford, anchored off Israel in the Mediterranean, which compelled its removal from the theatre. The rapid expenditure of munitions by its forces has denuded the American inventory so much the US Indo-Pacific commander has warned there’s not much left to fight China with should Xi invade Taiwan at this time!

The biggest winner of the Iran War unsurprisingly is Iran. With its military infrastructure quite literally reduced to powder and pulp with some 13,000 military facilities and installations destroyed by ceaseless US and Israeli bombing, the Islamic Guards still manage — a month into the war, to fire guided munitions to unsettle the US and its camp followers in the Gulf, laughing off Trumps’ threats to take out de-salination plants and civilian power stations, because they have over 417 de-salination plants that have greened desert spots in the Gulf states in their crosshairs. Reducing them to dust would return the emirates, sultanates and sheikhdoms to their original state — local fishing boat berths and caravan serais of yore, a prospect to chill the hearts of these desert rulers (who, of course, will betake themselves with their hundreds of billions of $, to Switzerland!).

Iran, moreover, has lost nothing that it prizes most. Nearly 600 tons of 60% enriched uranium are in tact, stored in an underground complex in Isfahan, geographically almost at the centre of the country, rendering any attempt by US and Israeli Special Forces to capture it, and cart it out of Iran, all but impossible. This vast amount of enriched uranium can, at a pinch, be turned into countless small radiation diffusion devices or “dirty atom bombs”, and are stored in bins deep underground that the Pasdaran guard more zealously than almost anything else in Iran. And further, Iran’s stocks of missiles and drones, and of grain, are being constantly replenished by Russia and China through the Caspian Sea route immune to American interdiction, with Moscow also feeding Tehran’s military with satellite-derived target coordinates and over-the-horizon terminal guidance for its weapons. And with Iran asserting its rights over Hormuz, every ship permitted safe passage through the Strait has to pay a $2 million fee — a small time revenue stream compared to Iran’s shipping its own oil unhindered from Kharg island to the world!

Most astonishing, however, is the grit and the spirit shown by the Irani people, not all of them supporters of Khamanei’s theocratic state. But they have firmed up, patriotically backing it in fighting off the Americans and Israelis. They are suffering enormous privation — food and electricity shortages, and are under terrific social strain but not buckling. There’s no people’s movement to replace the rule by shia clerics that Washington had fervently hoped would materialise once the first US bombs hit home. And, as a bonus, the Global South seems to be slowly but definitely coming around to supporting a besieged Iran.

The biggest loser of this war is India. Not because it got involved in any way, but because it did not, satisfying itself with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his foreign minister S Jaishankar spewing banalities. And then screwing up in the one diplomatic foray it embarked on at the UN. Instead of abstaining on both the Russian Resolution in the Security Council that sought an immediate unconditional cessation of hostilities by all sides — a reasonable objective to push, and on the Bahraini Resolution blaming Tehran for reacting to the Gulf states-aided US-Israeli attacks on Iran by striking at them, Delhi chose to co-sponsor the latter Resolution, putting India squarely in the Arab-Western camp. As a consequence, India’s problems may have just begun.

Sure, Modi wants to preserve his relationship with UAE and Saudi Arabia — the foundation for his Gulf policy — arguably the only successful prong of Indian foreign policy in the last decade. Indian labourers in the Gulf send back remittances amounting to almost $50 billion in the first quarter of 2026 — some 40% of the inward remittances totaling $138 billion (with UAE accounting for some 20% of it and Saudi Arabia 7%). It is a nice little hard currency cushion the Modi regime has over the years wasted on useless armament purchases, featuring such things as the dated Rafale fighter aircraft for the IAF and the navy! It also wants to protect the relationship with Israel — the source of advanced military technology. All this is understandable.

But there’s a lot of space between protecting Indian interests in the Gulf and Israel, and protecting the national interest vis a vis the US. Or, have Modi and Jaishankar missed out on the basic thrust of the American policy clearly and publicly articulated in Delhi recently by visiting senior Trump Administration officials?

We had Christopher Landau, US Deputy Secretary of State, bury the Modi regime’s flawed assumption that America would do for India what it had previously done for Dengist China — assist it to rise to great economic and military power. At the Raisina Dialogue 2026 — MEA’s annual poster event, Landau said no, that won’t happen because Washington had learned its lesson, and would not be a party to its own further diminution by setting up yet another economic competitor and rival. It left the Modi dispensation reeling — the main prop of its US policy kicked from underneath it by the Americans!

Next, Landau’s colleague at the Pentagon, US Under “Secretary of War” Eldridge Colby, son of a storied former US Central Intelligence Agency chief, William Colby, fetched up and formally aired, what I call, America’s compartmentalised strategy for India at the Delhi branch of an American thinktank. Washington will strive, he said in effect, to keep India down, preferably under its thumb, economically and in the technology sphere, prop up Pakistan as its main agent in the region, but will expect Delhi to help the US counterpoise China in the Indo-Pacific! Colby and Washington calculate that the Indian government is sufficiently spooked by the China threat to want to rely on the US strategically and to do so on American terms. And sure India should arm itself with American weapons, and reproduce any US military goods it wants but under license, thus lighting fire to the atmnirbharta pyre.

So far India has played America’s poodle without demur. It has adjusted its energy policy as per US directives, turning off and on the Russian oil spigot. Currently, this tap is open because as US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Press, America has “permitted” India to resume buying oil from Russia to stabilise the supply end of the International energy market. Private players, like Reliance, are careful not to tread on US toes, and simply follow the Modi regime’s lead. This is now a business incentive for Reliance because it has committed to buying $300 billion worth of oil from a new refinery being constructed in Texas, in other words it is subsidising that refinery’s construction — a deal Trump has hailed as a new era of Indo-US cooperative relationship.

But, sorry, all this Indian money and Delhi’s willingness to accommodate American interests will only buy India license-production deals for stuff like the GE 414 jet engine, not its source code! Nor will it buy Delhi consideration in the Trump tariffs scheme — India will continue paying 15%-18% tariffs on its exports to the US, lower than the 50% rate imposed earlier only because the US Supreme Court ruled such tariffs illegal. In short, India will get absolutely no US concession on anything.

Meanwhile, “Field Marshal” Asim Munir and Pakistan are making merry on the American penny. Islamabad parlayed a diplomatic arrangement by which, with the closure in 1979, of Iran’s embassy in Washington, Pakistan was looking after that country’s interests in the US, into a mediator role in the ongoing War in the Gulf. It is playing the role of a communications channel it last played when Henry Kissinger was courting China in the early 1970s and often used official Pakistan visits to detour secretly to Beijing to confer with Maozedong and Zhouenlai to facilitate US President Richard Nixon’s great rapprochement and “opening to China”. And Pentagon has resumed arms assistance to Islamabad. And on the other side, Tehran has given blanket permission for all Pakistani oil bearing ships to negotiate the Hormuz narrows, even as Indian vessels are treated on a case-by-case basis, which reflects Tehran’s displeasure.

All this time, with the Gulf War spinning out of their comprehension, Modi-Jaishankar find the bilateral relations with Tehran in trouble. Modi’s basic geopolitical construct of North-South connectivity to link Indian trade to Central Asia via Chabahar in Iran and Afghanistan to rival Beijing ‘s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is in the doldrums. Over $500 million has been invested but its success is hostage to Washington’s intemperate Iran policy, subject to mostly its downs. In any case, it is going nowhere! The Gulf War has put IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor) as well in deep freeze.

India’s “between and betwixt” posture in the new Gulf war, and its tendency to bow down to the US while Modi and Jaishnakar mouth inanities about the Gulf War and fixate on Pakistan, is not going down well in the Global South where, even though India is the current chair of BRICS, it is the Brazilian President, Inacio Lula, who is making waves, standing up for Third World interests, and opposing America’s war against Iran without UN authorization or even formal declaration of war. The latter epitomised by the US nuclear attack submarine torpedoing the Iranian navy frigate, Dena, returning home after the Indian navy had hosted an Iranian flotilla of three warships at its International Fleet Review in Visakhapatnam and in the Milan naval exercise. Sure, India afforded two of the Iranian ships and their crews “safe harbour”. But India had moral responsibility to see the Iranian frigates safely home, but there was not a squeak of diplomatic protest by Delhi demanding an explanation from Washington for its heinous act.

Trump and America are running away from war, and from the Gulf, not to return in any substantial way to the region for a very long time. Had the Modi regime kept its wits about it, understood the undercurrents, and kept atop the developments in the Persian Gulf, India would have had a strategic role in shaping and influencing that region post-US. In the event, neither America nor Iran cares for India and its regional interests, and UAE and the Saudis know the Indian remittance economy survives at their sufferance and they can control Delhi. India is really up a creek, and the Modi government seems not even to be aware of the deep waters it is treading.

At the core the issue is of India being strung out between strategic subservience to the US — that has led to its Gulf policy ending in a cul de sac, and economic dependence on China, with both Washington and Beijing now hanging Modi-Jaishankar and India out to dry.

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Invest in a Foreign “pie in the sky” aircraft, drain Money and ATMNIRBHARTA

Posted on March 23, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[GCAP Vs FCAS]

Every military procurement deal is a boondoggle. Apparently the Ministry of Defence thinks the Indian government has money to burn, and that the Indian taxpayer will uncomplainingly fund the armed services’ procurement excesses. There has been an unending series of exorbitantly priced defence buys in the last few years which make little sense, taken singly or together, do not follow the tech trends, and are completely oblivious of where warfare is headed — it is towards vast numbers of small, cheap and mobile drones and autonomous weapons as the military successes by Ukraine against Russia and Iran’s against the combined might of the US and Israel have shown.

Anytime there’s an announcement of a new fighter plane deal or of an investment in one, I despair. It is invariably yet another decision in a time-tested pattern of the Indian Air Force buying into the wrongest thing, choosing the most expensive fighting platform option available, at the wrong time and just when manned aerial warfare is becoming extinct, and when the atmnirbharta/self-reliance programme needs desperately to be rescued from going down the drain.

So here we are — the great Rajnath Singh, who doesn’t tire of yakking about atmnirbharta, and the Defence Ministry he “leads”, once again indulging the foresight-less IAF’s fetish for flying blind in clear light. On Vayu Bhavan’s plea, the Defence Ministry endorsed the service’s outlandish demand for a still more “exquisite” aerial weapons platform that the country can acquire by joining one of the two European consortia developing a 6th generation fighter aircraft! There’s the GCAP (Global Combat Air Programme) with the UK-Italy-Japan and the Dassault-led FCAS (Future Combat Air System) involving France, Germany and Spain. A more spendthrift and straight forwardly foolish and foolhardy decision is hard to conceive, even as the idiot electronic and print media and commentariat in the country do their customary wahs, wahs, and genuflect before the wisdom shown by all concerned!

When one thought the Indian Air Force couldn’t go any lower than with the Rafale deal, which pretty much killed off the Tejas project, it did. It plunged lower by seeking participation in GCAP/FCAS that will write finis to the indigenous Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft programme (AMCA). With the kind of latitude allowed the IAF by a mindless defence ministry and government to buy what it wants from wherever it wants, no surprise the Indian Navy too wanted in on the goodies, the fun buys! So it decided on the Rafale Marine carrier aircraft — this being its contribution to the Indian military’s dive into the depths of despond, at a time when the 2-engined Tejas designed for carrier operations had made it through all the test trials, and was on a fast-paced induction schedule into fleet service. Like the Air HQ, the NHQ too, did not do the right, nationalist, and patriotic thing. The cost of this folly? Rs 63,000 crore ($7.5 billion) for 26 Rafale Marine (Rafale-M) carrier fighter jets at $289 million for each plane WITHOUT weapons!

There’s no price tag mentioned for joining GCAP/FCAS yet, but it is not hard to extrapolate from the by now familiar figures for the most recent deal — Rs 3.25 lakh crore ($40 billion) for what was called the “Make in India” initiative for 114 Rafale aircraft, 18 off the shelf, 96 srewdrivered in the world’s leading aircraft screwdrivering facility — HAL. That amounts to Rs 2,850 crore EACH for an antiquated 4.5 generation fighter aircraft that went up in Sindoor and, for its troubles, was promptly shot down by the Chinese copy of the 4th-generation Israeli Lavi, the J-10 flown by the Pakistan Air Force! If this sad warplane, Rafale — exactly the same generation as Tejas but far less agile, costs so unimaginably much, how much more will joining GCAP or FCAS cost?

An initial total programme estimate for GCAP was $96 billion, which figure has escalated to something over $120 billion. Of this sum, Italy’s most recent estimated contribution by workshare and investment is $21.8 billion, leaving Japan and the UK to pick up $50 billion each. The Italians and the Brits are keen to water down their contribution by getting India in — when there’s an unsaleable product, the wisdom in the international arms bazar is to go to the Indian military — every foreign defence industry’s saviour! But GCAP is on an accelerated drive because Japan, fearing the Chinese Air Force, which is unveiling new high-tech combat aircraft every other year, reportedly wants it on the flightline soonest as replacement for its Mitsubishi F-2. In the event, it is too late to rework the whole workshare and proportionate investments aspects. But GCAP states would be very happy, of course, for the IAF to buy their plane, but it will get it last after the charter members have met their requirements. But because entry into the project is unlikely, the GCAP option may be off but, theoretically, split 4 ways the Indian contribution to it, at first glance, would be around $30 billion.

Ah, we come now to the IAF and Indian Navy’s favourite supplier — France! The FCAS cost estimate is $117 billion. But it is on its last legs because France and Germany differ on the basics — France thinks it already has the Rafale platform design that can be fruitfully embellished with new tech and built on as the advanced FCAS. But Dassault is unwilling to share the source code for the baseline Rafale system with Germany, arguing that Germans have zero aircraft designing and development capability, and Berlin can’t do much better than shut up, ride pillion, and periodically fork up the Euros! Germany feels insulted as does Spain, which has produced the medium range transport plane C-295 that Tata are assembling in the country, but little else. Enter the winner of the INTERNATIONAL SUCKER title – (We have to win at something) India!

Typically when in doubt, France, and every other arms supplying country, rounds in on India — everyone’s best and most valued customer, that can be taken for a ride anytime! And rounding in on the armed service dearest to Paris’ heart after its own Armée de l’air re-labelled since 2020 as Armee de l’air et de l’espace — the Indian Air Force! Dassault is hoping it can rope India into financing this whole wretched enterprise even as Germany and Spain wisely decamp. To recap, the FCAS initial cost of $117 billion is expected to escalate in lifetime cost terms to somewhere between 300 billion Euros (or Rs 3,25,13,10,00,00,000) and ONE Trillion Euros (Rs 10,83,77,00,00,00,000) !!!!!!!!!!! Halve whatever the price tag, and that, conservatively speaking, will be India’s contribution! Think of this mindboggling sum and blanche! Who says India is a poor country? Look beyond the Potemkinised New Delhi, Narendra Modiji!

[Su-57]

If the IAF is so eager for quickly stepping-up into the 5th-gen aircraft milieu, the Russian offer of its Sukhoi-57 seems reasonable, especially as it comes with complete transfer of source code, which will help finesse the Indian AMCA design and performance as well, and to integrate Indian-designed missiles into it, etc. Though let’s be clear: It is not a genuine stealth aircraft as it lacks the S-shaped engine ducts, say. But makes up for it by having recessed engine placement and an antiradar mesh on the fan-front. It can supercruise — go supersonic without afterburner, has endurance at 3,500km range (extendable to 4,500kms with external fuel tanks) and a 2-seat configuration (the IAF desires) for longrange strategic missions — useful considering the Service’s antipathy to a genuine strategic bomber — the Tu-160 White Swan with 13,500km range for non-stop 25-hour flying. Plus, importantly, the Su-57 (NATO codenamed “Felon”) has concealed in-built bomb-bays, so unlike the hideously expensive Rafale with weapons under-slung and on external wingpoints that would light up enemy radar like a Christmas tree at distance, it is relatively invisible. The 57’s radar cross section increases only for the moments the bays open for the weapon drop/release. And the entire deal will be far more affordable. And the IAF would have two mainline 5th gen+ aircraft — AMCA and Su-57 in its fleet. Politically, it will help correct the country’s foreign policy that has tilted so far US/West-wards there is near certainty of the country stepping voluntarily into America’s vassalage. See how India’s energy politics is hostage to Trump’s domestic political imperatives, highlighted by recent developments on the US-Iran war front.

It will make the Rafale completely redundant, and the deal for it can and should be cancelled. And if Rajnath Singh and the Defence Ministry have any military sense, which they don’t, the Rafale-Marine would be ditched as well, and trust reposed in the indigenous naval Tejas as the Indian Navy’s flag carrier fighter/strike aircraft.

Compared to the number of conflicts it has engaged in, post-1971, the IAF has had little to show by way of success. Its record of aerial kills is negative — it has lost more aircraft than it has downed enemy planes, as the first day (May 7) of last year’s Op Sindoor — 5 aircraft lost, or the 1st day of the Kargil conflict (two aircraft lost) in 1999, proved. (AP Singh can talk all the nonsense he wants about “12-15” Pakistan Air Force aircraft, including F-16s, the IAF supposedly shot out of the skies during Sindoor and, while at it, Air Chief Marshal, why not claim the destruction of the entire PAF fleet?! But he knows the score.)

But damned if the IAF does not have a very impressive record of killing home-designed and developed aircraft — the HF-24 Marut, HF-71/72/73, Tejas 1A, 2, and now the Chief of the Air Staff, ACM Aman Preet Singh, can proudly and symbolically mount the head of the AMCA in the officer’s mess on Zakir Hussain Marg, and gloat over another kill! Because, with over half a trillion dollars needing to be committed to FCAS prospectively where will the private sector consortium of L&T, Tata, & Bharat Forge — the finest in the country, tasked with designing, developing and producing the AMCA, get the money from? And with the attention diverted to the FCAS will the IAF ever actually buy any AMCAs when they are produced?

Fortunately, this horrendous GCAP/FCAS investment plan is so far only a paper demand by the Defence Ministry. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have to ultimately decide if pouring hard-earned Indian wealth after poor European investments is a good idea. Whosoever is advising him on these issues will, hopefully, suffer from a fit of common sense, and prevail on Modi to reject this IAF-Defence Ministry request outright, and get the Prime Minister to tell the IAF to live within the country’s means — a piece of counsel he may like to extend to the other chiefs of staff he meets periodically as well, and to the senior commanders of the three armed services he confers with annually.

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America preparing to cut and run from Iran

Posted on March 10, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Trump: Sleeping through an “excursion” with bodybags]

Just as the Kremlin is unwilling still to own up to the conflict in Ukraine as a war, and is sticking with Putin’s initial phrase for it — “special military operation”, so coined to denote a small, swift, military action, Donald Trump is struggling to find the right label for the US’ joint misadventure with Israel in Iran. While the US “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth has called it “war”, the US President, ten days into an armed affair that is far from over, has been reluctant to do so because calling any military hostilities war immediately enlarges the canvas and the nature of operations and, worse, raises expectations his government cannot meet. Hence, Trump has settled on calling it an “excursion”, having realised soon enough that his talk of regime change was so much hoo-ha that, short of landing massive American armies in Iran, is impossible to obtain.

And even then there’s no guarantee that the landed US forces will survive the intense firefights and close quarter guerilla fighting in attritional mode — something the Americans are loath to engage in — in the cities and in the Iranian countryside that over 31 Pasdaran (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) sub-regional headquarters with prepositioned stores have been preparing for. The Pasdaran are some 200,000 strong with a potential for unlimited manpower callup. Then there’s the Shia-ite theology of self-sacrifice and martyrdom to contend with. The Karbala syndrome — the exaltation of Hussain Ali’s death at the hands of the Umayad Caliph, Yazid, in 680 AD at the Battle of Karbala (in Iraq), which fuels the Pasdaran effort, is not to be taken lightly.

If the US military underestimated the “gooks” they were fighting in Vietnam, it may discover something equally chastening coming its way in Iran should Trump foolishly opt for a land war in a country twice as large as Iraq, which the US failed to keep in check after its ill-advised invasion in 2003. Given that Iran’s terrain is almost designed for mountain guerilla warfare of a kind that America lost in neighbouring Afghanistan not too long ago, Trump’s trumpeting his objective as successively “unconditional surrender”, “regime change” and having his choice selected as the next leader in Tehran was manifestly the wrong tack for him to take. “If Mr. Trump seeks escalation,” said Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Aragchi, tartly, “it is precisely what our Powerful Armed forces have long prepared for, and what he will get.” Trump has not repeated his patent nonsense lately, suggesting he may have seen the futility of setting such goals.

In any case, Trump’s excursion is getting pricey! According to US Congressional sources Op Epic Fury is costing America $890 million per day to prosecute, and the bill to-date for just the expended guided munitions and armaments exceeds $560 billion! This void will be a bonanza for the US defence industry to fill. But it is the bodybags coming home to grieving American families that is upsetting Trump’s plans. In wars, the US sports a dismal record — its only success being the 1990-91 Op Desert Shield (or, the 1st Gulf War). Honestly, the American society has no stamina for war — its muscularity being limited to beefy Hollywood stars wreaking havoc in action movies! So far the “butcher’s bill” of 7 dead and 140 injured American soldiers has been enough to unsettle US politics, with the media and the people starting to clamour for a pullout. Sympathetic media pundits are preparing the ground, arguing that because Iran has been militarily hurt, in many respects grievously, Trump can call it a victory and get the hell out. This last is round the corner because the media campaign is failing with MAGA’s mega influencers, like Joe Rogan, turning on Trump. What was supposed to be a quick in and out — a few days of decisive military strikes to bring Iran to its knees, is gradually taking a familiar course — an elongated military conflict that is impacting the global economy. With the Hormuz Strait now being mined by the Iranians, the US knows it is in for the long haul in a hard knuckle fight the American people have no will to sustain.

The real test, however, now looms for both the warring sides. Does Tehran and the new Mojtaba Khamanei dispensation think its military and the Pasdaran have squirrelled away sufficient quantities of guided munitions to keep the oil traffic through the narrow Hormuz Strait (23 miles at its narrowest) stalled? And then, for how long? Already the regional and international economies are tanking, with the oil, gas, and refining industries slowly grinding to a halt. If the Abadan oil refining complex and the oil storage and loading port at Kharg Island (able to handle 7 million barrels per day) have so far been spared Western strikes, Tehran too has desisted from taking out major refineries and tank farms in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf. No one wants a world without West Asian energy. In fact, Trump warned Israel against hitting Iranian oil facilities again after it struck such an installation near Tehran. Keeping the Hormuz gateway closed is precisely Iran’s leverage, and Iran seems confident that it can keep it shut long enough to advantage it. The US offer of naval escorts for oil tankers through this Strait, isn’t the answer.

In this context, the Modi government’s considering the option of Indian navy ships escorting some 36 Indian-flagged tankers with India-bound oil stuck on either side of Hormuz is a perfectly silly and dangerous idea, particularly in light of Tehran’s pointed threats of attacking any crude-carrying ship. In fact, an Indian vessel would be a tempting target for Iranian missiles for many reasons. Providing Iranian naval ships and their crews safe haven in Indian ports will only get you so far with a Tehran that is caught up in a do or die struggle. A shot to disable an Indian ship would create a bilateral crisis, yes. But Tehran may deem this an acceptable price for signalling to bigger players its resolve to stop the oil traffic whatever it takes. Except, hitting an Indian vessel will be minus the danger of a US carrier group countering with a lethal response in case a western tanker is sunk. Therefore, which ever part of GOI thought up this damn fool idea — very likely MEA seeking to please Trump, the foreign policy reflex of the Indian government should be to stop being an “idiocracy” (a word coined by Tom Cooper, the Austrian military analyst of repute)! Does Prime Minister Narendra Modi want the Indian Navy to be the “canary in the coal mine” for the US? Really?!

Instead of its ships risking passage through Hormuz, Delhi should quadruple oil imports from the Sakhalin oil field that ONGC has equity in — a far simpler and obvious solution. It should herald a fullscale restoration of oil trade with Russia on a sustained and permanent basis, not subject to cut offs of energy ties everytime some Trump or his poodle barks in Washington. Had Modi not allowed Trump to walk all over him and told the US President off in no uncertain terms that good relations with America will not be at the expense of ties with Russia, an old and reliable friend, and that India buys Russian oil because it will always suit India’s purposes to do so, and that the US centrally requires India to be on its side in its rivalry with China, that trade with India and access to its vast market benefits America more, as does the flow of cheap skilled labour, it’d have silenced Trump. And a grateful and appreciative Putin would have sold oil pennies on the barrel. Now the country will have to pay through its nose for the Sakhalin/Siberian energy. But better oil from somewhere than no oil from anywhere. And it can make this as in the past a remunerative business by selling refined petroleum products to Western European countries who’d be less willing in the future to impose sanctions just because Trump wants it so.

In this respect, it may be noted that when the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, assuming a lofty attitude, told the American Press that America had “permitted” India to buy oil from Russia, there was NO immediate challenge from the MEA to say that the country’d damn well buy oil from where ever and whenever as dictated by national interest, and that Delhi did not need US permission or approval. That reaction came two days after it had become a hot political issue here.

How little regard Trump and his Administration have for Modi and India was clear when Washington failed to inform Delhi about the plan for one of its nuclear attack submarines to torpedo an Iranian missile destroyer, IRIS Dena, barely outside Sri Lankan waters, when it was returning to home base after participating in the Indian Navy’s International Fleet Review off Vishakhapatnam (Feb 15-25, 2026) and the MILAN 2026 maritime exercise with friendly navies hosted by the Indian navy. The Modi regime couldn’t have averted this incident on March 4, but to spare it the blushes, could have reasoned with the US Indo-Pacific Command, Honolulu, to postpone the action to when the vessel entered Iran’s near seas so as to link it up with Op Epic Fury — a not illogical ask. Instead, Dena sank with the Indian government making much of sheltering the other two ships in the Iranian flotilla, Lavan and Bushehr, with external affairs minister S Jaishankar, at the Raisina Dialogue, MEA’s annual poster event, apparently justifying the kill by pointing to the US and other foreign naval presence in Diego Garcia and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean region. Hegseth described the surprise attack as “quiet death”! 87 bodies of dead Iranian submariners were fished out and 32 sailors rescued. (https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/iris-dena-iran-israel-war-indian-ocean-caught-on-wrong-side-of-events-s-jaishankar-on-iranian-ship-sunk-by-us-11181112)

Israel may have good reasons to want Iran defanged militarily and nuclear-wise, and to get that chump, Trump, to activate the American strike wherewithal against Iran, thus distributing the work load and the risk. No doubt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid it on thick about how easy it’d be for the Hero of Venezuela to depose the regime of the Ayatollahs, have some working stiff manage things for the West in Tehran, and position Trump, after Venezuelan oil (with Saudi and Gulf oil already in the American bag), to now also control the far superior grade oil and gas pumped out of Iran, and thereby hoist himself up as the true energy King of the World, or some such…! True to type Trump swallowed it whole and now finds himself up a creek.

Russia and China meanwhile couldn’t ask for a better turn of events. In stark terms, Russian oil is at a premium again and will stay that way for a good while yet, and the fact that two US aircraft carrier groups and huge air forces have been mustered to deal with Iran along with the redirection of logistics to the West Asian theatre, means a more desperate Kyiv being forced to husband its meagre military resources, and fewer American weapons to fight the Russians with. China, likewise, benefits from the US military forces in the Indo-Pacific being preoccupied with Iran — a mission that is fast depleting the American stock of guided munitions and long range missiles, and weakening the US’ military readiness profile in the Far East.

The seemingly scatter-brained Trump faces a no-win situation. Despite the Israeli and US onslaught, Iran has reportedly managed to preserve the bulk of its deadliest arsenal, made up entirely of indigenously designed and produced long range weapons systems — the Bavar 373 surface-to-air missile, and the 300km range Mehran air defence system operated by the Pasdaran. It means there will be more losses of American fighting assets, more casualties, and no easy wins for Trump to trumpet. Moreover, the longer the conflict the bigger the number of bodybags delivered back to the US, multiplying the political difficulties for Trump at home. He was, after all, elected in 2024, in part because he had promised “no more wars”.

In the event, with the November Congressional elections looming, the continuing Iran imbroglio will likely lose his Republican party majorities in the lower house and possibly even in the Senate. This is a certainty. As of January 2027 then, he will become a lame duck president and his usual theatrics will be of little avail. It is an end-state he wishes to avoid. So, if he isn’t already looking for a face-saving excuse to decamp from West Asia, he soon will. America’s reputation and credibility as partner and ally, or what little is left of them, being as usual in tatters after each such episode.

If no credible excuse comes his way and Hormuz remains bottled up and no oil flows, look for Trump to get out any way. He will invent some fiction for the US military to flee West Asia. It is something the American armed forces have had a lot of practice doing all over the globe in the last 70-odd years (Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan) and is good at — cutting and running from the battlefield!

TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) Trump, Zindabad!

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Catalytic War? Not quite!

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Strike on the Khamanei compound in Tehran]

It has the makings of a catalytic war. The US and Israel jointly struck Iranian targets, mostly nuclear-related installations and other strategic assets in Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz, the port city of Chabahar, Ayatollah Khamanei’s residential compound in Tehran and, to make a point, the centre of Shia Islam, Qom.

As warned, the Pasdaran — Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, retaliated with missile firings on Tel Aviv, and the air bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain housing US Navy’s 5th Fleet, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and the international airport in Dubai, UAE, 2nd home to Bollywood stars and rich Indians, who must now be questioning their wisdom of investing in million dirham homes and apartments there.

Warnings of such an extension and spread of the war is what Tehran had hoped would deter the US government from going in with Israel in the initial air strikes. It didn’t.

If any of the emirates and kingdoms of the Gulf had any kind of consequential militaries, they would have felt compelled to respond to the Iranian strikes in kind. But because they are mostly American camp followers, they are on the horns of a dilemma. They cannot alienate Tehran and the shia minorities in their own societies (especially in Bahrain) or motivate the shia groups fighting Israel in West Asia — Hezbollah and Hamas in the main supported by Iran, by mounting even symbolic actions against the Tehran regime. And yet they cannot be drawn into a larger conflagration because the status of the UAE emirates and sheikhdoms in particular who, other than because of their oil economies, have fashioned themselves into global finance centres. Imagine how quickly Dubai would revert to a desert outpost if the large Financial Institutions decamp, leaving the various Sheikhs’ and emirs’ plans for their small estates evolving into technology, education, and cultural nodes, in the dust.

This is why there will be no catalytic war to engulf the Gulf.

The notion of ‘catalytic war’ was originally conceived in the 1950s by Henry Rowen, then a professor in business management at Stanford University, and later the 2nd head of RAND and Assistant Secretary of Defence in the George Bush Administration. He theorised that the two super powers — the US and USSR would be drawn into a nuclear war should their regional allies start conflicts that would suck the super powers into them.

Some 70 years later, we have a situation of a possible reverse catalytic war — the US’s lead role against a regional power that reacts by striking at America’s allies in the proximal areas inducing the latter to respond, triggering a full blown military imbroglio. But this won’t happen because the exchange ratio for the Gulf states for thus stretching the conflict could be catastrophic as mentioned above. So, starting with Jordan — the worst hit, none of the Iran-targeted states will unleash their puny forces against Tehran.

Catalytic war in the reverse mode won’t happen also because most of the leading West European countries have come out against the US-Israeli conflict initiation, with France and Spain, not Iran, raising the issue yesterday in the UN Security Council. So, Trump is now aware that his anti-NATO posture is coming home to roost, that European NATO will no longer support US-started conflicts anywhere in the world (unlike in the Cold War when UK and Australia joined the US in the war in Korea, and many NATO states despatched their troops to fight alongside American soldiers in Vietnam and much later in Afghanistan). Now, Washington has only Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel to bank on. And where Iran is concerned, it is the Israeli tail that is wagging the American dog — with Trump falling in line with Tel Aviv’s longstanding demand for a regime change in Tehran.

While Trump and Israel have claimed that the mullahcracy in Iran has had its leadership decapitated — that Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has been killed, it is unlikely this alone will mean much if the balance of forces within Iran continues to be with the shia clerics.

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, there are four main players — the shia clergy and their main pillar of support — the all powerful Pasdaran with its intelligence tentacles reaching out into the nooks and crannies of the state and society, weeding out the protesters and unreliables wherever they may be found.

Secondly, there is the religiously conservative population in the vast countryide — the real strength of the clerical government in the country. Thirdly, there are the city folks in major urban centres — the people who supposedly yearn for the good times during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who projected himself as the latest in the line of Persian emperors going back to Cyrus the Great circa 5th Century BC. Even though this Pahlavi’s father, Reza Shah, was commander of a Persian Cossack Brigade, who was picked by Western powers at the end of Worl War I to rule Persia and protect their oil investments and interests. But a parallel democratising political development occurred with the Iranian majlis (parliament) in 1952 electing Mohammad Mosaddeg, a reformist, as head of government only to have the US Central Intelligence Agency stage a coup a year later, and return Iran to the West-friendly absolute rule of Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza, which was ended by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. This Mohammad Reza’s son, the 1960 born Reza Pahlavi as the lineal descendent is Trump’s man to fill, once again, the vacant Iranian “throne”.

The fourth and decisive player are the baazaris — the traders, with enormous financial clout, whose siding with Khomeini ended the Pahlavi “dynasty”. This then is the setup, and the baazaris again will determine the side the balance of power will tilt in Iranian politics. The baazari element is too culturally tuned against the West to sustain the return of the American educated Reza Pahlavi as an obvious American stooge.

This analysis raises three side issues — two important, the third not so. First, when and how will the Iranian military with the Pasdaran in the van use the more “advanced weapons” in their arsenal that they have threatened to fire after they have expended the stock of older missiles and such? Assuming that at least one set of these new weapons are supersonic anti-ship missiles, will they be used to sink the most high value targets in the seas offsore — the US aircraft carriers led by the latest USS Gerald Ford equipped with EMALS (ElectroMagnetic Launch System) for rapid launch and recovery of strike aircraft, now anchoring off the Israeli coast, and reachable by longrange supersonic anti-ship missiles allegedly transferred to Iran by Russia/China? Should an American carrier be sunk, it will sink Trump’s presidency as well as surely as tomorrow’s sunrise. Trump will not react reflexively by doing anything foolish, like using tactical nuclear weapons, say. Why? Because then Moscow and Beijing will come to Tehran’s aid, and then there are no bets as to what might happen next. World War is too pregnant a phrase to bandy about loosely. But such a prospect does hove into view.

But what if Trump responds with a huge conventional military venture, all combat arms and assets in? No amount of aerial bombing will bring Iran to its knees. What will is a land war, and that is not something the US army, which has time and again shown it cannot win close quarter fights, and will abhor getting into. Further, if Gerald Ford is sunk with all its defences turned on, what prevents an enthused Pasdaran/Iranian navy-military from bringing down the other carrier and all the carrier escorts in nearby waters, and taking out US 5th Fleet ships berthed in Bahrain? If the Iranians don’t fire these missiles then questions will arise about the Pasdaran chickening out. Can Pasdaran survive that supposed calumny?

It leads to the second issue– actually that old question asked in Sherlock Holmes’ mystery of the missing race horse — Silver Blaze! Why did the dog not bark?! Here the dog is Russia-China, both big powers with interest in retaining the Ayatollah dispensation in Tehran. Why has there been not a squeak out of them even though Trump daily rants against them? After all, the mere fact of Soviet nuclear attack submarines trailing the Enterprise carrier group in the Bay of Bengal in 1971 allowed the Indian army to complete its business in East Pakistan. A similar presence could sow no end of doubts in the Trump White House and in the mind of the US military and save Tehran’s goose.

The third issue is the recent trip by Narendra Modi to Israel. From the first sense, one does get the feel that the returns for Delhi from the much heralded visit, as some commentators have concluded, are paltry. But be that as it may, the interesting thing is that Netanyahu must have alerted Modi to the ingoing Israeli strikes on Iran. So where was the need for the Indian government to put in its two pice worth of nonsensical advice to the US, Israel and Iran to seek peace?! The proverbial counsel given a blonde bimbo is relevant here: Don’t open your mouth and prove it!

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Australia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence procurement, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Internal Security, Iran and West Asia, Islamic countries, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, United States, US., Vietnam, war & technology, Weapons, West Asia, Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 58 Comments

Defence cooperation — Don’t do with Israel, Modiji, what you are doing with France

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu & Modi]

After the visit by President Emmanuel Macron, India and France have just sealed what is officially touted as a “Special Global Strategic Partnership”. This is diplomatese for the fleecing of India, exemplified by the nearly Rs 4 lakh crore deal for the 4.5 generation Rafale fighter aircraft with the first 20 bought off the shelf, and some 90-odd of the rest assembled here by who else, HAL.

This defence public sector unit is to subscribe to a production scheme that starts at the 30% “indigenous” level rising to 60% by the end of its 30-year run. Even an otherwise weakheaded defence minister Rajnath Singh senses something is very wrong with the cost-product calculus, and has asked that the indigenisation level be upped but only to 50%. Hopefully, he means starting out, because Dassault Avions would be only too happy to reduce the end-level by 10%!

It did not occur to our respected defence minister or even Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tell Macron — that the contract will have to include ALL SOURCE CODES FOR EVERYTHING ON THE AIRCRAFT, INCLUDING WEAPONS, OR NO DEAL! Whatever the understanding to-date to buy this aircraft, it can be junked at any time. At a minimum, full and certifiable transfer of source codes should be the condition for the deal going forward. India holds the whiphand here, not France. Why is Delhi acting as a supplicant? It is Paris that wants India’s money, not the other way around. So Modi should INSIST on this! Nobody in the Indian government apparently appreciates just how much of a lifeline this deal is. For France!

While Modi misses no platform to blow his atmnirbharta trumpet, the head of Dassault — maker of the Rafale, Eric Trappier, has been equally determined in ensuring that his Company parts with no technology of any consequence in the Rafale deal, including source codes. Indeed, he severly and publicly reprimanded the head of the German firm, Thyssen-Krupp Marine, for promising source codes to India for the HDW 214 diesel submarine to get the navy’s Project 75i. He obviously fears Thyssen-Krupp will set a precedent for the rest of the arms suppliers, who have treated India as an endless source of sustenance, to follow. It is Trappier that the British weekly, The Economist, blamed for cratering the European trilateral 6th generation Future Combat Air System project, because he did not want to share the Rafale technologies with Germany and Spain as the tech base for the FCAS. So he is being consistent in not helping India become an independent fighter aircraft producer. But that is France’s problem.

The way the transaction has progressed it is as if Modi and Rajnath are nothing, the Indian government is zero and will bend to whatever the mighty Trappier and Dassault deign to SELL to the IAF! Thank you IAF leadership for doing France’s/Dassault’s work for them by projecting the Rafale plane as something the service and Indian security cannot do without — when that is about as hollow a claim as can be conjured up by a set of unscrupulous salesmen to a bunch of yokels! But, hey, Trappier has won out. India will pay a princely sum for a fast aging fighter platform and that too MINUS source codes. But let’s speculate a bit about what may be possible.

The 60% indigenisation level would be upped, and the timeline for it contracted to 3-4 years should Messrs Modi & Rajanth Singh sternly press Paris. But having staked a position, France is unlikely to budge but, should push come to shove, will agree — it is desperate to have this deal and the accruing bank balance to fund its own future programmes — to no indigenisation beyond 80%. Why 80%? Because the 20% level remaining with Dassault/MBDA for the most advanced Rafale tech, that will come as “black box” technologies, is what will hand Paris the “short leash” — the means of controlling the Rafale fleet and hence the IAF, and hence Indian military options for the lifetime of this plane in Indian service!

Except that will still leave India without the Rafale source codes which, in Indian hands, would help to fit, for instance, Indian-designed bombs, rockets and missiles and even avionics without Dassault/MBDA intervening to extract massive fees for integrating them into the plane.

This “mother of all defence deals” in terms of the sums involved, will empty out the Indian taxpayer’s purses to make a wealthy France, wealthier! This when, in pursuance of Modi’s atmnirbharta policy, such extraordinarily large sums in hard currency could have been invested in, say, additional production lines in the far more labour-efficient, process-wise effective, and product quality-wise better private sector for the Indian designed Tejas light combat aircraft in all its versions — 1A, 2, as a natural lead in to the AMCA (advanced medium combat aircraft) programme already allotted to the consortium of Tata, L&T, Bharat Forge, et al. This, perhaps, makes too much logic and sense for the Indian government.

But why the above preamble for a post on Modi’s Feb 25-26 trip to Israel? Because the Rafale deal with France is a cautionary tale for the sort of defence cooperation the Prime Minister should not enter into with Tel Aviv.

The strategic-minded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already announced a 30-year timeline for his country to become fully independent of US support because he has judged correctly, as the Indian government seems incapable of doing, that relying on America even in the midterm could be perilous and it is a risk his country cannot and will not take. Keeping the Israeli economy afloat is the key.

India-Israel relations are in fine fettle and the sharing of intelligence and ways and means of fighting Islamic extremism and terrorism, and managing disputed borders, is by now fairly routine. But bilateral ties are ready for an upgrade. Logically, because Israel is the start-up nation of renown and creates and innovates technology as its staple, and because most such technologies are first deployed for use by the Israeli Defence Force in its security systems, it is necessary, Netanyahu has concluded, that his country find a reliable, ideologically resonant partner. An economically prospering and friendly India fits that bill. Indeed, the Israeli government is looking to explore the possibility of drawing India into more extensive defence cooperation, and Israeli defence and high-tech companies are seeking Indian investors and partners for joint programmes to sell in a global market.

These developments have germinated, I believe, from an idea I first conveyed to Uzi Landau — I have written about this in previous posts — in, if I recall correctly, 2002, when he was visiting Delhi as the Israeli Minister for Public Security. He had come over for a meeting with me at the Centre for Policy Research, along with Shabtai Shavit, who headed Mossad from 1989 to 1996. Among other things that we talked about, I suggested to them the obvious mesh of Israel tech muscle with Indian finance and large DPSU production infrastructure to manufacture traditional military hardware for consumption by both the Indian and Israeli militaries — from large items such as tanks, long range guns, to small arms and ammo and artillery shells. Economies of scale and lowered unit price would obtain. This could lead, I argued, to Indian financing of, and participation in, at all levels, with Israeli companies researching and developing cutting edge weapons systems and military software, and how such a partnership could free both states from the inconstant “friendship” of the US. They were intrigued by the 2-way defence/security bond I was proposing. I pitched the same concept to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he visited Delhi in September 2003.

The idea made its way through the Israeli government and got traction in the Indian government, fructifying in the 2006 deal between the DPSU Bharat Electronics Ltd and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for joint design and development of the Barak 8 (or Barak LR) long range surface to air missiles (LRSAMs) to protect Indian aircraft carriers and warships. The first test firing of this ship air defence system was in 2010. By 2018, four Kolkatta-class destroyers had the Barak 8 protection. To date, India has invested between $1.4-$2 billion in this project. It led to extension of the project to meet the Indian army’s demand for area air defence, and yet another programme, this time to design and produce a medium range variant of this missile.

Indians may have wished for a fairer division of work. DRDO produced the dual pulse rocket motor for the 150 km range, mach 2 missile, and IAI the MF Star multi-function, surveillance, track, and guidance radar. Still, it is a successful enough partnership to whet the Israeli appetite for more such cooperative ventures. And that’s where matters stand.

If defence cooperation is not to stay stuck in the Barak 8 mode, it may be wise for Prime Minister Modi to take the lead in furthering this cooperation by broadbasing it with a proposal, as was originally envisaged, to have the production of Israeli conventional weapons platforms and small arms move at least partially from Israel to India, to benefit the Indian armed services as well as the IDF and for export, and to establish an India-Israel Defence Cooperation Council as the lead mechanism for the purpose, and to realise the larger agenda of meshing the two defence industries for the good of both the countries.

It will be a departure from the typical license production/screwdrivering projects the DPSUs undertake of second rate equipment, such as the Rafale. And it will involve the conjoining of the unique talents and strengths of the two countries. What may emerge is a very strong joint defence science, R&D, and industrial complex to power the ambitions of India and Israel, and as a player on the global scene. And it will cement a desirable embrace.

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Internal Security, Islamic countries, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons, West Asia, Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 60 Comments

Rajnath Singh gave the right directive; why was General Naravane so fearful of taking a decision?

Posted on February 9, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[2020 army chief General MM Naravane & Northern Army commander Lt Gen YK Joshi]

There’s at once much more, and much less, to the quotes from the memoirs — Four Stars of Destiny, of the former army chief, General MM Naravane, carried in a commentary by Sushant Singh, an ex-army officer turned perceptive commentator, published in a recent edition of the magazine, Caravan. Access to this otherwise paywalled piece is available at https://archive.is/20260202071854/https://caravanmagazine.in/security/navarane-memoir-ladakh-crisis. The quoted parts are, apparently, the most controversial portions of the book that has not so far been cleared by the Defence Ministry for public release. If the content of these quotes is the reason why the Modi regime is chary, then it is needlessly apprehensive. Because, in reality, it is more damning of Naravane than it is of Modi and his government.

But what’s the brouhaha about? It has to do with the nature of the government’s directive, specifically, the defence minister Rajnath Singh’s instructions, to Naravane to deal with a situation on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) created by some PLA tanks from its Moldo garrison rumbling uphill towards an Indian position at a higher level in the Kailash Range on 29 August 2020, and the Northern army commander YK Joshi pressing him to allow the firing of his medium guns in response. The drama in Sushant Singh’s narrative refers to Naravane “making frantic calls to the leaders of India’s political and military establishment, including Rajnath Singh, the defence minister; Ajit Doval, the national security advisor; General Bipin Rawat, the chief of defence staff; and S Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs”, asking each of them, in the army chief’s words “What are my orders?”

This is mighty strange, but why were Doval, CDS, and the Minister of External Affairs, Jaishankar, of all people, even on the list that an increasingly frazzled Naravane was contacting to get instructions from? Were these persons in a formally designated heirarchy whom the army chief was, protocol-bound, to call serially for his orders with an imminent clash brewing? And did these people constitute what Sushant Singh calls ” a government committee” put in-charge of developments on the LAC by Prime Minister Narendra Modi? “My position was critical,” writes Naravane finding himself between Joshi “who wanted to open fire with all possible means” and a government committee “which had yet to give me clear-cut executive orders.”

And, if the persons, ostensibly on that “committee”, were called for directions by Naravane in that emergency in 2020, are these same persons still to be called for pol-mil instructions that the current or a future chief of the army staff is/will be expected to get his guidance from should things heat up on the disputed border? To put it plainly, why should the army chief expect an “executive order” from any one other than the Defence Minister? And why should it be tactically detailed? Look up the political directives from US President Franklin Roosevelt to General Eisenhower at the beginning of the American involvement in World War II — when American forces reached North Africa in 1942, and before Normandy landings in 1944, and consider just how undetailed they were. Or Churchill’s guidance to his theatre commanders, from a British politician who was a known authority on military matters. Rajnath Singh, in comparison, is a provincial Hindi Belt politician, like many others in the cabinet, who couldn’t spot a military drone from a hobby drone if his life depended on it.

But the guidance that was issued, and who issued it is the nub of the story. Implicit in Naravane’s account is his dissatisfaction with the Defence Minister’s instructions. Rajnath Singh, albeit after consultations with the PM and others, as the memoir reports, advised Naravane “Jo uchit samjho, woh karo”— do what you think is appropriate. Why was that directive wrong or inadequate, and why are doubts being raised about the Defence Minister as the order issuing authority, and Prime Minister Modi charged with dereliction of duty, and of shirking his responsibility for a decision that Naravane exaggeratedly believed could have started a running war with China? Sushant Singh thinks it was the PM’s call that he didn’t make — a very questionable thesis.

In the event, Naravane decided correctly to have Indian tanks with the lead army unit get into hull down positions, lower their guns and get set to fire downhill at the advancing line of Chinese tanks — actions that stopped the PLA armour in their tracks, ending that particular incident.

This denouement raises several troubling questions. First of all, about what Sushant Singh calls an “existing protocol” — “clear orders not to open fire” till, in Naravane’s words “cleared from the very top.” Why is such a protocol there at all? That’s my peeve — what is so special about the LAC that it has to be treated with kid gloves, and even the smallest troop movements have to be cleared by the China Study Group — that apex group of Mandarin-speaking nay sayers headed by NSA, before its decisions go up the chain to the PM?

But, to return to Naravane’s narrative, isn’t Rajnath’s directive with the PM in the know not “from the very top” then? Why does he, Sushant Singh, and other like-minded people, have a problem with that? And, if as the ex-army chief says, it made for “purely a military decision”, again, what’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t all tactical decisions on the LAC, in any case, be taken at most by the Divisional commander, if not lower commanders? Why bring the corps and theatre commanders even and, more ridiculously, the COAS, into it? The real problem from Naravane’s point of view, it would appear, was that he was “handed a hot potato… [a] carte blanche [to do whatever he thought was best, with] the onus…now totally on” him, and he did not cherish it. It turns out, he did not want to make that decision, have that onus on him!

In that case, what does Naravane, and others who think like him, believe the army chieftaincy is about — endless rounds of meetings in South Block with chai and samosas/biscuits, inspections of army formations and facilities with the requisite pomp and bandobast, making speeches, taking off on the occasional MEA-arranged foreign trip, and similar fun things? Or, for taking hard decisions in crises?

But Naravane dramatises the whole thing — about his sitting “with the map of J & K and Ladakh on one wall, Eastern Command on another”, visualising “the location of each and every unit and formation” on marked and unmarked maps, and about his contemplating various factors, such as the ongoing Covid pandemic, a faltering economy, fractured global supply chains and whether the army and government “Would…be able to ensure a steady supply of spares, etc., ….in case of a long-drawn-out action? Who were our supporters in the global arena, and what about the collusive threat from China and Pakistan?” But, he reassured himself that he had the necessary reserves, and that the army was “ready in all respects” before the Hamlet in him surfaces again: Writes Naravane “but did I really want to start a war?”

Sure, military chiefs are assailed by doubts before a big operation or even small actions but, as history shows, usually these are mostly about the war/ops plan, the assets deployed, the sufficiency of resources to sustain it, and the quality of his commanders implementing it. But, why was he thinking about things that are the preserve of others laterally or higher in the food chain to weigh and evaluate, and which was not his remit? After all, Rajnath had handed him a “carte blanche”.

Last week, at a talk I gave to a Higher Command Course in a military training institution, a student officer, in response to my view that India and its military need to be more aggressive and assertive when it comes to war and warfighting, asked if the military should not be “more responsible” because of the economic straits the country is in, etc., the kind of talk especially from military officers that gets up my nose. Seemingly, Naravane’s type of thinking is the prevailing norm for officers slated for promotion to higher ranks. And I said to this officer what I say here regarding Naravane’s attitude: It is none of the military brass’ damn business to think like politicians or diplomats or economists. Attend on the offensively desirable military outcomes you should be delivering whether any recessive-minded government wants it or not!

Remember how the late great general and commander 17 Mountain Division, Sagat Singh, the man who singly got us the victory in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, handled the PLA with offensive disdain and, disregarding his immediate corps commander GG Bewoor’s directive, and the same protocol and CSG constraints Naravane faced, beat up on the PLA and retained Nathu La Pass for the country in 1967? And how Naravane’s predecessor in office, General K. Sundarji, in his Op Chequerboard, exactly 20 years later, showed resolve to tangle with the PLA that its High Command did not expect, forcing the Chinese to withdraw from their intrusion in Somdurong Chu? Imagine what a Sagat or a Hanut Singh, the great armoured commander, when he took over the same Chhangu-based 17 Div would have done with a carte blanche that Naravane was afraid to exploit.

The PLA is a puffed up paper dragon, deflate it, let local commanders mount continuous offensive tactical actions that may lose a bit of ground here, gain a bit of territory there, to make the LAC a live theatre. The army may be surprised by the dividend such a policy will fetch for its own reputation and by way of politico-strategic gains for the country with respect to its negotiating position. Being a perennial punching bag does not help.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indo-Pacific, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, society, South Asia, Tibet | Tagged , , , , | 50 Comments

Trade deal — Modi’s cringeworthy Twitter-X response, and ramifications

Posted on February 3, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi & a triumphal Trump?]

Who writes and uploads Prime Minister’s Twitter-X messages? Because it is certainly not Narendra Modi, whose English language competence is confident but basic. His often used alliterations and other literary flourishes are, like for any good orator, what he practices before delivery from material handed him by somebody, his speechwriters(?). Why is this relevant? Because his purported reaction to Trump’s announcement of the India-US trade deal on his social media handle, Truth Social, was so cringeworthy, so needlessly servile and obsequious, it has done real damage.

It stamped India as an American camp follower, with its reputation in the world already plunging when, given its repeated evocations about the UN and the liberal world order, Delhi said nothing about Trump violating UN provisions and the international law, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas, and all but taking over Venezuela — even billing himself “President” of that country.

But first, consider (the screen shots of) Trump’s message on Truth Social and Modi’s response.

Trump:

Modi:

The effect of US President’s message:

  1. For Trump, calling someone my “greatest friend” means zilch. He will throw Modi and India under the bus the instant Xi agrees to a trade deal and a mutually beneficial arrangement is agreed on regarding the US accessing Chinese rare earths and China US chips/microconductors. Wait and see! He is not in the least interested in India other than as a country with a leadership that can be easily coerced into doing anything he wants Delhi to do and views it as a useful pawn to have in hand in the big power game afoot with Russia and China.
  2. Modi “agreed to stop buying Russian oil [which] will END THE WAR in Ukraine”. Re: The first part, India is already complying with Trump’s demand to shut down the energy traffic with Russia. As to the second part, the ridiculous cause and effect connection between Indian Russian oil purchases and ending of the Ukraine war is derived entirely from Trump’s finding a scapegoat for a war he said he’d end in a trice only to find that he had no inkling about how or why it was happening and, of course could not terminate as he had proclaimed. His cabinet puppets — treasury secretary Scott Bessent, commerce secretary Edward Lutnick, his White House trade adviser Peter Navarro than parrotted his scapegoatism.
  3. According to Trump, the trade deal was the result of his acceding to the Indian PM’s personal “request” to an agreement that will see America reducing its 50% tariffs on Indian exports to 18% even as the Modi regime “will move forward to reduce their tariff and non-tarifff barriers against the United States to ZERO”. So the understanding here is 18% American tariffs in return for 0, as in zero, Indian tariffs!
  4. “And the Prime Minister committed to buying”, Trump says, much beyond the $500 billion in energy, technology, coal, Agricultural and other products”. The other products here refer apparently to military hardware of all kinds.
  5. Trump refers to this completely unbalanced India-US relationship as “amazing” — I suppose that is TRUE, because no other friendly state has agreed to such a trade deal!!
  6. And, then came the expected self-congratulation. He attributed success in the deal to the “two people” — himself and Modi who, he claimed, “GET THINGS DONE, something that cannot be said for most.” This is certainly true. US policies are whatever gets into Trump’s head at the moment. But in terms of implementation, the American judiciary is playing spoiler in many social areas he’s mucking around in. But this is definitely the case with Modi. One wishes though that the Indian PM, who packs so much political power and support, had pushed foreign and military policies based on the “INDIA FIRST” principle he talked about during his first election campaign in 2014, but it did not inform his subsequent stance.

Ramifications of Modi’s message:

  1. If Modi thinks Trump is his “dear friend” then he suffers from (hopefully, short term) amnesia. Because just 7 months ago, Op Sindoor is when Trump showed how dismissive he was of Modi, and what he thought of India by reasserting the traditional American policy tilt to Pakistan of propping up the latest tinpot Field Marshal ruling the roost there. And by resuming military aid — the initial tranche to refurbish and upgrade the Pakistan Air Force’s F-16 fleet, possibly to the Super Viper F-21 (or Block 70 F-16) level that was offered India as MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) option. It is a uniquely IAF “need” the Indian government has filled by the fast obsolescing 4.5 generation Rafale platform (that was shot down on the first day of Sindoor May 7, 2025) that the IAF craved, costing Rs 75,000 crores that France, with the Indian government’s acquiescence, is withholding source codes for!
  2. The PM expressed delight for the reduction of tariffs on Indian goods and commodities to 18%, but what was he “delighted” about considering India is required to zero-out, by Trump’s reckoning, all tariffs on American products. Including “Agricultural” that the Indian Commerce Ministry has been trumpeting it mightily resisted?
  3. Two “large economies” and “largest democracies” and such, is a load of rhetorical poppycock. If US companies actually move a whole lot of their manufacturing from China to India then (i) what cards will remain for Trump to negotiate a trade bargain with China that he desperately desires? (ii) won’t it run counter, moreover, to his own policy of arm twisting US industry to home-base all manufacturing? and (iii) with Zero tariffs on US exports, what will be the incentive and motivation for US industry to move its production base to India, rather than just selling their products whole with unhindered access to the vast Indian market???
  4. One thing that nobody expected was the depths to which Modi abased himself before the US leader with this line — “President Trump’s leadership is vital to global, peace, stability and prosperity”. It is almost as if Modi was admitting he fouled up by derailing Trump’s spurious Nobel Peace Prize campaign by not joining Asim Munir in broadcasting, post-Sindoor, that minus the great peacemaker, India and Pakistan would have ended up bashing each other silly! And Modi was compensating with the utterly nonsensical afterthought to end his message — “India supports [Trump’s] efforts for peace”. This when, just in the last few weeks, Venezuelan sovereignty was violated, Greenland barely avoided an US military invasion and a US versus NATO fight in Nuuk, Iran is confronting a US naval-air armada off its shores, and Mexico is facing unilateral US military intervention ostensibly to wipe out the Sinoa-based and other drug cartels pushing cocaine into America.
  5. May be like Denmark, which was the first NATO state to send its military detachments to fight alongside US troops in Afghanistan, and now finds itself targeted by Trump over Greenland, Modi may next consider, who knows, deploying the Indian military on a “peace” mission to help out the US — anything to curry favour with the White House! We will manage whatever occurs afterward. World peace uber alles! Thankyou, Trumpji!
Posted in Afghanistan, arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence procurement, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indo-Pacific, Islamic countries, Latin America, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, Russia, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Trade with China, UN, United States, US., Weapons | Tagged , , , , | 47 Comments

How not to tackle Trump

Posted on January 25, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi & Trump]

Canadian PM Mark Carney caused a sonic boom at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week by deflating US President Donald J Trump without much ceremony. He called a spade a shovel, told Trump where to get off, and won rousing acclaim from everyone for showing the gall that leaders of other countries, who have been at the receiving end of Trump’s increasingly wayward, intentionally hurtful, policies, have gritted their teeth but shied away from doing. Carney also laid out a road map for those countries that fear they cannot do without the US on their side and without Trump’s benevolence. He advised Middle Powers to cast aside complacency, and come together to mind their trade and security and to thwart “American hegemony”.

It was an extraordinary address because it broke through the barrier of fear and reticence of confronting America. Particularly, for Canada because the US accounts for 77% of Canada’s goods exports, 46% of total foreign direct investment, and over 60% of Canada’s merchandise trade (per 2023-2024 figures). If despite such US stranglehold on his country’s economy, Carney stomped on Trump and dared him to do his worst, it shows that Ottawa has had it with Trump and his unending shenanigans — a sentiment evidenced in the speeches by European leaders who followed Carney, such as the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and President Emmanuel Macron in Paris who warned the US about the European Union retaliating with a trade “bazooka”, and by an European legislator who in parliament told Trump “to f***k off”!

Even as the Davos meet ended, a bunch of European NATO members, perceiving a serious military danger from Trump, airlifted troops to Nuuk to show solidarity with a Danish military contingent deployed for the defence of Greenland against America, indicating just how radically the security situation has changed, resulting in NATO, along with the liberal, rules-based, international order, coming apart. In Carney’s words — “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition” — a phrase that sounded the gong on the prevailing disorder. (If you haven’t heard Carney’s Davos speech, do so — it is stunning in its eloquence and refreshing in its unvarnished view of the current international affairs. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izDAOvHz5Wc )

Further, as if to show that Canada and the world had economic alternatives, Carney sought rapprochement with China, slashing the 60%+ tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 6% as a curtain raiser to a possible trade agreement with Beijing. A discombobulated Trump, used to foreign leaders letting him walk all over them, and shaken by Carney’s unexpected and devastating onslaught, threatened, what else, 100% tariffs. Ho hum!

Less exposed than Canada but visciously targeted by Trump with 50% tariffs, India ended up doing a bit of what Carney recommended. Its exporters found alternative markets for their wares but this trend did not motivate Delhi to up the ante and, in callibrated fashion, pull away from America. Buckling under pressure, it chose instead to comply, acquiescing in Trump’s demand to stop the buys of Russian oil. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air reports a 29% month-on-month drop in the Indian offtake of Russian energy.

Restraint is unlikely to earn India and Narendra Modi any respite, because Trump will only pile on more pressure because, alone among large countries, it succumbed. A bully will not relent unless the bullied stands up to him — the reason for Carney and even the British PM Keith Starmer growing a spine, and then he will slink away. As Trump has time and again done when confronting a Putin or a Kim Jong-un, and now Carney.

The former BJP Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta somewhat optimistically thinks the stereotype of the Hindu as “mild” and “patient” that Swami Vivekananda decried, has been replaced by Modi’s “assertive” Indian, and that India has acquired a more aggressive persona. If so, this change is nowhere reflected in the country’s America policy. In fact, the Modi government’s non-reactive, submissive attitude will only impel Trump to heap more scorn and humiliation on Modi and the country.

So far the Narendra Modi dispensation has studiously avoided saying or doing anything (Re: Trump projects — 50% tariffs, Venezuela, “Board of Peace” for Gaza, FTA under negotiation) that it fears would aggravate already bad relations. The external affairs minister (EAM) S Jaishankar, on his part, limited himself in this period to his politically safe and favourite schtick of dumping on terrorism and Pakistan, and getting passing foreign dignitaries to nod sympathetically. Thus, we had the Polish and the Spanish foreign ministers clucking censoriously even as Islamabad, on US instructions, funnels Pakistan Ordnance Board-produced artillery shells and small arms ammunition to Ukraine through the Warsaw-Kyiv rail link. And, just as futilely, the EAM has been plugging multilateralism from every available forum when it is actually on its last legs, just as the United Nations is. It proves that, as always, Delhi is the last in the station to know that the train it had long hoped to ride first class in, has gone off the rails. More generally, the Indian government seems to not even understand anymore what matters in international affairs, or even what the currency of exchange is. Psst.. it is hard power! Like in the good old days of gunboat diplomacy!

The rest of the world seems to have grasped this reality. And is responding as Carney, Merz and other European leaders did at Davos, including the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, all of whom said the old order is gone, never to return, and called for “independence” from the US, for military self-sufficiency, and for seeing the old style alliance as a vehicle for national subordination. They also agree on genuine free trade agreements as the solution, with von der Leyen referring to the FTA with India to be announced this Republic Day week as potentially the most economically potent agreement EU is signing.

Then there is Modi’s India, that still believes America is the answer to its prayer, when Trump has made it abundantly clear that he is contemptuous of Modi and his pretensions, and that he’d take every opportunity to kick India in the teeth. But that’s the sum and substance of Modi-Jaishankar’s “three monkeys” US policy — see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, verily fitting into Carney’s box of states that “go along to get along”. Delhi seems entirely oblivious to, or completely in sync with, the truism the Canadian leader also mouthed that “Sovereignty is the ability to withstand pressure”. What we are, therefore, witnessing is the Indian government’s determination to make good on relations with the US even if as an appendage, notwithstanding the traditional ally-appendages in Europe seeking an escape from thralldom.

It suggests that there is no one in the Indian government that can read Washington, or indeed Beijing. Because, if there were, in fact, somebody of note, Delhi would not step repeatedly into traps set by the US (civilian nuclear deal, Op Sindoor, technology transfer, free trade agreement) and China (LAC, trade imbalance), and look foolish. Sure, the commentariat has finally woken up to the perils of proximity to the US, but warnings had been repeatedly and consistently issued by this analyst in his books, blog, and other writings over the past 30 years about an absolutely unreliable America that Delhi needs to deal carefully with.

A deeper understanding of a foreign country comes from spending a lot of time there. But where America is concerned, there is no one in the government — not a single person that I know of, who has resided there for any length of time (Jaishankar pulled a short 3-year stint as political counsellor in the Washington embassy in the mid-1980s), and can leaven policy discussions within establishment circles with any special insights. Our diplomats and civil servants are like Indian academics and media persons — acquainted with America in arranged settings (official interaction, university and think tank seminars and conferences, or US State Department-hosted tours, and the like) that leave them dazzled, and yearning to somehow relocate there or, better still, to get their progeny settled with green cards!

From the enduring Indian national interest perspective, what Trump has done is to be welcomed! He has clarified the options for the Modi regime by closing the H1B visa gate for techies and prospective Silicon Valley millionaires, and the daily news of Indians getting shot, mugged, or harrassed, has put the NRI community on notice. The overconfidence of the Indian settler in the pre-MAGA days led to excesses. Such as the 90-foot-tall statue of Lord Hanuman, dubbed by some over-clever NRIs who installed it, as the “Statue of Union” in Sugar Land, Texas. Besides being considered an eyesore by the enraged local Texans, it is a goad for the Christian Nationalists of the American south and southwest that make up the MAGA flock. So far they have restricted themselves to mocking the Monkey God, reviling Hindus as savages, Hinduism as satanic, and Hindu religious symbols as an affront to Christianity. Soon they may take a hammer to the statue, and run the Indians out of the town.

The US east and west coasts are considered relatively liberal. But so was Texas until recently, whence the large NRI community in Houston, say. The upside is that the pesky Khalistani element among the Sikh Americans has gone quiet, and will stay quiet. After all, they can’t tell when Trump and MAGA will turn fully on them, and they may need Delhi’s support. As it is, the turbaned Sikhs are in the same category as the Hanuman statue — a magnet for the crazies to beat up on “bin Laden” look-alikes. Just as the red tika on sari-ed women’s foreheads, in the 1990s, drew the skinheads into physically attacking them in New Jersey.

What Messrs Modi, Jaishankar, et al, have not learned is that Trumpian transactionalism is not some stumble that will pass in 2029, but here to stay as the new pillar of American foreign policy. Delhi can still strike a deal here, a bargain there, if the price is right, and here Modi, to earn goodwill, has gone overboard with a spate of government-to-government deals for assorted military hardware and weapons platforms. But, rather, by its very nature, transactionalism will lead only to more transactions, not to what Modi had hoped — some grand scheme of comprehensive cooperation organically linking India to the US through intermeshed economies and the large NRI community in America, to stabilise South Asia, Asia and the Indo-Pacific!

With the FTA with the EU round the corner — what with von der Leyen and her colleagues as special guests at tomorrow’s Republic Day parade, I fear a disappointed Modi government will now think the EU will be what the US failed to be, and fall with relief into the European lap, to be as thoroughly exploited this time by the Europeans!

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Indian Air Force — the most luckless air force in the world

Posted on January 15, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Rafale]

The Indian Air Force is the most luckless airforce in the world and its leadership is to blame for it. Once marked out as the leading force of an “Icarian India” with its span stretching from the Maghreb to Australasia, it is now reduced to something that is repeatedly beaten by so puny a thing as the Pakistan Air Force. What a fall! To pretend the IAF can take on the PLA Air Force, is to dream! But dream on!

In a pattern of longstanding, the IAF has been led by persons apparently determined to steer the force into the ground, much like the hot-dogging pilot with deficient flying skills, who destroyed the export potential of the Tejas by flying the plane into the desert sands at the UAE airshow a few months back.

It is nevertheless a mystery — the kind of hook Paris has into the Indian government. It is as if the Quai d’Orsay can make the Modi regime, the latest in the line, to do virtually anything it wants it to do. Forget about how French defence companies keep tabs, nurture support for the wares they peddle by courting promising military officers, Wing Commander level up, with all kinds of comfy attention, and by conducting lavishly hosted trips to Paris with all its allurements for the flagrank, and even media persons. And one hears too tid-bits of information pertaining to monies diverted into accounts of the ruling party of the day. But these are secondary factors. The real reason for France’s success lies elsewhere — in its promises relating to nuclear technology that it does not intend to ever deliver on, but means to use to successfully string India along. Our Prime Ministers, who are as inncocent of any technical knowledge as their generalist civil servants they rely on for advise, are seduced by such promises.

At the top are the twin nuclear promises relating to the transfer of miniature nuclear reactor technology to power submarines and aircraft carriers, and to provide Indian nuclear scientists access to the French Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) chamber — the Laser Megajoule facility near Bordeaux. The ICF creates extraordinarily high temperatures by firing lasers at nuggets of fusion fuel to create miniature thermonuclear explosions that help refine Hydrogen Bomb designs, something sorely needed because the Indian thermonuclear device tested in 1998 was a dud. What with the late, little lamented, Dr R Chidambaram, the greatest disaster to befall the nation’s nuclear weapons project, singlehandedly ensuring the capping of the Indian arsenal at the low yield fission level with his argument that India needed no additional testing beyond the 1998 tests, and then seeing to it that the small ICF facility in Indore was run into a state of such disrepair as to render it non-functional.

Hence, the importance of the French carrots dangled before the donkey of an Indian government that made Delhi successively buy the Mirage 2000, the scorpene diesel submarine, and now the Rafale — all incredibly wasteful deals that because of time and cost overruns have ended up costing the exchequer a third more than their original price tags of tens of billions of dollars — totaling hundreds of billions of dollars, and all because the Indian government never applied its mind, because it has no mind to apply.

The IAF’s procurement priorities are realised, aided and abetted by the apparatus of state that does not know its arm from its elbow where air warfare or any other military or mil-tech issue is concerned, and relies on advice from the very source — the Chief of the Air Staff who, personally, has the most to gain from it. Isn’t there a conflict of interest here? I am referring strictly to the metric the military services informally use to evaluate their chief of the day — whether he acquires for the service a prized foreign fighter plane, an aircraft carrier, or an imported tank, helicopter fleet, or artillery system. To be fair, the navy and army are no different — but these services are less egregious, less in the public’s face, in their acquisition objectives. The IAF keeps cawing about such deals enabling the service to reach its 42.5 squadron strength, that was recommended by the JRD Tata Committee post-1962 War. Technology has since moved on, but not so the IAF — it is sticking to that figure to cover up for its ills.

Because, performance-wise, what has the IAF, outfitted with the latest Western aircraft as per its wishes, done in war? In the 3-day farce — Op Sindoor, for instance, it managed to get one or more of its Rafales — supposedly the most advanced plane in its inventory, shot up on the very first day, and just like that over a billion dollars went down the drain. It matched the 1999 Kargil conflict record, when again, it lost two aircraft on the trot on the very first day.

What the IAF has done magnificently well, however, is burnish the reputation of the Pakistan Air Force and its indigenously assembled ex-Chinese JF-17, even though it was the J-10Cs that secured for the PAF its IAF Rafale kills. So much so, that combined with the IAF piloted Tejas mishap, countries like Indonesia that had seriously considered buying the Indian aircraft begged off, bought the Pak-built JF-17s instead and then, by way of spillover beneficial effect, also bought the drones the Pakistan defence industry produces! Bangladesh, Iraq, and Libya have lined up to buy the Block II version of the 4.5 generation Pakistan-made Chinese aircraft complete with an AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar and a Chinese off boresight air-to-air missile from a family of PL missiles that brought down the Indian Rafales, all available for a paltry $30 million.

India excepted, there are no Third World countries around anymore for Western countries to rip off. They have all wisened up. Why would they go in for a 4.5 gen Rafale — Iraq and Libya are also where the French feverishly pitched this plane, that India is paying $337 million per piece for when, for the same amount, they can buy ten JF-17s? Or, the $337 million could have bought 2-3 Tejas Mk1A, an aerodynamically and otherwise far superior aircraft to the JF-17. So, India remains the lone village idiot who gets fleeced left and right!

However, the math indicates an even more ruinous outcome: With Rs 3.2 lakh crores, or US $38.4 billion (at the conversion rate of INR 83-84 for a US dollar) committed for 114 Rafale, where’s the money for the Modi government to spare for any indigenously designed and developed aircraft? And, mind you, this sum only accounts for the platforms, all the weapons — the A2A Meteor and the A2G Hammer missiles cost a whole deal of extra, again in the billions of dollars! But comfortingly for HAL, the deal will only have it do what it has ever done — screwdriver 96 Rafales from semi-knocked down kits at its assembly lines, as it did the MiG-21s, MiG-27s, Jaguars and Su-30MKIs without, in the process, gaining for the country even an iota of combat aircraft design and development capability.

Further, the Rafale draft-contract stamps India as the go-to country for any Western government keen on having its defence industry subsidised by the Indian taxpayer. Not to miss out out on the feast, the German Chancellor Merz too came hither, happily flew kites with Modi and, for his troubles, pocketed a multi-billion dollar contract for the HDW 214 diesel submarine. This when the country makes nuclear-powered submarines for God’s sake!, and needed only to buy a conventional sub design and few select technologies, like optronic masts, which the Germans would have happily sold for a fraction of the cost of the entire, and entirely redundant and useless, HDW 214 package!

To return to the Rafale, the French were so brazenly confident that they could force the issue that Dassault did not concede a millimeter, and the final contract involves no transfer of source codes. This means that integrating every little Indian designed and produced ordnance or avionics tech, will necessitate going to the French company which will charge a hefty sum to do the needful — talk of bleeding a customer to death, and this will be for the duration of the aircraft’s 35-year service life. Moreover, indigenisation of the Rafale production starting at 30% will never exceed 60%! The negatives of such deals are many, and have been publicly raised for years and years now — mostly, I confess, by me in my writings. But these issues are not unknown to Indian defence ministry negotiators. In the event, the price negotiation team, involving IAF brass, should be held accountable for defalcation. May be a future government will investigate these deals.

Then again, official Indian negotiating teams are the darlings of Western governments for a reason — they play the perfect saps and suckers, and can be sold any bill of goods. Go ask the American negotiators how surprisingly easy it was to get the Jaishankar-led MEA team to agree to non-resumption of nuclear testing as condition for “civilian nuclear cooperation” in the 2008 nuclear deal with the US!

But for Air Chief Marshal Aman Preet Singh the Rafale purchase will prove a boon, cementing his reputation within the air force, at least. But it will just as surely relegate the IAF to the category of a third rate, foreign-dependent force — a status it was sliding towards for some time now, and fully deserves. In comparison, PAF is a second rate air force because it does more with less, even as the IAF, in contrast, is habituated to doing less with more. And, of course, the Rafale deal, as expected, will sound the deathknell for the Tejas Mk1A, Mk 2, and the advanced medium combat aircraft programmes — starved of funding so that the French firms led by Dassault can prosper.

But what does Aman Preet Singh care? Like his army and navy counterparts, he has specialised in talking up atmbirbharta to please the ignorant political bosses while plonking for imported goods. Predictably, Singh is in the running to replace General Anil Chauhan as CDS! If his record as CAS is any guide, Good Bye theaterisation!

The Prime Minister ceaselessly lectures the people about taking pride in swadeshi, and asks young talent to contribute to India’s startup-nation credentials, but his government still ends up getting pressured into buying imported weapons systems even as the military services chiefs pay no end of lip service to the desirability of arms self-sufficiency! But the record is irrefutable that, other than impoverishing the country, none of these exorbitantly priced Western armaments have done much of anything in actual military operations other than failing.

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Gor is no solution for India-US relations

Posted on January 13, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Ambassador-designate Sergio Gor and the PM]

The Tashkent-born, Sergey Gorokhovsky, rechristened Sergio Gor, is seen by many in the MEA and in the Modi government as a deus ex machina that will put the derailed bilateral relations wih the United States back on track. They are apparently as unfamiliar with the Washington reality and the relative standing of people in Trump’s vicinity as the Indian media and commentariat.

Gor has the usual chequered history of a foreign-born trying desperately to fit in any which way and to find his place in the American society. Gor’s Jewish parents left the disintegrating Soviet Union for Israel in 1994 before relocating to the US five years later. Along the way, the young Uzbek got Catholic schooling and converted to Catholicism. Predictably, he chose rightwing anti-Communist Republican party political channels to make a mark and serve his ambition. Gor is like any of a host of Indian-origin Americans, some of whom latched on to the liberal Democratic party ideology and followed a similar path to visibility in the political realm.

Essentially, the Russian-speaking Gor, a publicist and pamphleteer, who worked with the late Senator John McCain before tacking to the Trumpian wind that took Washington by storm, was rewarded with a not too important line job as head of personnel appointments at the White House. This designation sounds grander than is actually the case because most senior appointees in the current US Administration represent different constituencies and had their separate lines to Trump. Indeed, Gor began canvassing for the ambassadorship to India, perhaps, after realising that he was losing out in the race for an influential policy-making job as assistant to the US President that Stephen Miller was closing in on. The Delhi embassy was an attractive consolation prize, considering he would enjoy four years of vice-regal life, of being fawned over by the Indian government, its functionaries at his beck and call, genuflecting before him at Roosevelt House.

Yes, it is the same Miller who fleshed out the US designs for Venezuela by saying, in effect, that America had a greater right to Venezuelan natural resources (mainly oil) than Russia and China which had heretofore hogged them, and who, with condescension dripping from his lips, explained to CNN the Hobbesian world Trump is shaping. “We live in a world, in the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power”, which he said defined “the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Misreading of Gor’s relative importance in the Washington hierarchy by the Indian Establishment is of a piece with Jaishankar and his MEA cohort believing that Trump’s second term as President would herald the Golden Age of India-US cooperation! Op Sindoor saw the dunking of such expectations in a tank of ice-cold water. It occasioned Trump’s show of utter contempt for Modi and for India because of his conviction that he had read the Indian PM well enough to know that slapping him down would not lead to Delhi reacting adversely, and that he could personally insult Modi and put India’s economic nose out of joint with the imposition of tariffs that no other country faced, as long as Trump now and then salved the Indian PM’s ego by calling him a “good friend” and, as Gor did, talking of India as “essential” to peace in the Indo-Pacific, and just so long as America continued to draw benefits from the four foundational accords — General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Intelligence (BECA).

Thus, the offer of membership in the Pax Silica, conceived to counter China’s advances in the microchip field and to firm up a stable supply chain, as a curtain-raiser to Gor’s ambassadorial tenure was counterpoised the very next day by Trump musing about a 25% tariff for any country with economic links with Iran atop the 50% tariffs Indian exports already face, with the threat held out of the tariffs being increased to the 500% level when all trade becomes nonsense. In like vein, the US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dismissed the free trade agreement under negotiation as of little account and asked the Indian government to get to the back of the line of countries seeking FTAs, just because, as he revealed, Modi failed to call Trump when the latter expected him to!

So much for India’s essentiality and Modi’s closeness to Trump! But Modi’s and India’s being treated as doormat is acceptable to the PM’s advisers, who have been counselling restraint and still more restraint in dealing with Trump, who knows a punching bag when he sees it. This when the evidence clearly shows that a display of self-respect as reflected in a coldish reception to Gor, graduated standoffishness, and dilution of the foundational accords, combined with showy assertions of common interest with the EU and the leading European states and with Russia, would have had a tremendous impact, conveying to Washington the costs of taking Delhi for granted, and daring Trump to seek some other counterweight to China in Asia, which is not there.

But back to Gor, and his supposed access to Trump, and how it is expected to benefit India. If he was as valuable to Trump as people here make him out to be, why would the American President let him go, cart him off to distant Delhi? The fact is Gor cannot just pick up the phone, call Trump, and get some wrinkle or the other the Modi regime wants ironed out, to be done in a jiffy. With regard to Trump and Gor, it is more a case of a servitor being accommodated. But out of sight, out of mind, really matters where a US president like Trump is concerned, whose attention span is as short as his impulsiveness is electric. Gor did little in policy terms whilst in Washington, and can do even less from Delhi other than to snuffle Trump’s insults

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Trump, Maduro and the End of the UN — good riddance!

Posted on January 4, 2026 by Bharat Karnad



[Emperor Selassie addressing the League]

Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, addressing The League of Nations in Geneva on June 30, 1936, invoked the collective security clause and, with great gravitas and grace, asked this council to act against the aggressor, Italy, with no confidence whatsoever that his pleas would beget the desired action. The Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, had used a small dispute over an Ethiopian oasis town in the Ogaden region to invade Ethiopia a year earlier to realise what he considered Italy’s right to it’s own set of colonies in Africa to match the British East African Territories, and German Tanganyika — the very grandly conceived Africa Orientale Italia, comprising other than Ethiopia, an annexed Somalia and other smaller principalities. It was an age when even middling European powers thought nothing of carving up parts of the non-white world as their own eminent domains. “What reply shall I have,” Selassie famously asked the League, as great power representatives tried to avoid meeting the Emperor’s fierce gaze, “to take back to my people?”

It marked the beginning of the end of the League of Nations set up by the victorious powers of the First World War at the 1919 Treaty of Versailles to preserve peace, their interests and their order.

Nicolas Maduro, the erstwhile President of oil-rich Venezuela, is no Selassie. But, Ethiopia’s fate consumed the League. Maduro’s forcible removal by US Special Forces may have started the unravelling of the UN in slow motion.  Unexpectedly for Trump, the independently elected Vice President of the country, Delcy Rodriguez, has asked for an expeditious return by the US of Maduro, and otherwise demanded America keep it’s hands off her country. Moscow, and Beijing — which has invested over USD 70 billion mostly in it’s oil industry, will definitely want a restoration of the status quo ante, failing which a Rodriguez dispensation with no obvious links to the US, when what Trump wants is a pliable government in Caracas which will hand over the country’s oil fields to US companies to run, a’la Aramco in Saudi Arabia.

But, as the UN Secretary General warned, such unilateral action bodes ill because, he declared, it will set a precedent. So, what’s new? Even for the level of brazenness, the manner in which the hemispheric hegemon — the United States of America, exercised it’s geostrategic Monroe Doctrine imperatives and ordered  the capture of the presidential compound in Caracas, after securing a nearby military airfield, and spirited away Maduro and spouse out of the country aboard USS Iwo Jima, must surely herald something unprecedented — a return to a time when powerful countries did what they pleased. The US President Donald J Trump made plain his reasons — no, not the violation of democratic norms by Maduro, but that America now had the largest oil field in the world under it’s control, and can force the price of oil down to cents on the barrel. It is the hoary issue of controlling natural resources. If China did the same thing by cornering rare earths reserves worldwide over the last 15 years but by stealth, Trump means to do it by rougher and readier means.

On Venezuela’s request the UN Security Council will be convening to discuss the matter today. For the record, Washington claims “narco-terrorism” as instigating its military intervention and has justified it under the self-defence provision of the Charter. Russia and China have accused America of straightforward aggression, violative of all UN norms of peaceful conflict resolution.

It will be interesting to see what India’s official position will be — as of 0530 hrs IST 4th January 2026, there was no reaction from Delhi. Will it stand by the principle of inviolate sovereignty and join in condemning the US at the UN and elsewhere. Or do what it did in 2019 when the Venezuelan-US relations last flared up, and Delhi urged peace, neutrality, and similar pablum.  Because Maduro’s hijacking sets another kind of precedent.  Thus, a country can charge and try in absentia leader of another country and then arrange for his shanghai-ing out of his country to face imprisonment in the country that indicted him.  It would be a free for all, and no leader will be able shake off the fear of a similar thing happening to him. Specifically, Narendra Modi has been held legally responsible by many Western human rights agencies for the killings of Muslims in Gujarat when he was CM. He could be waylaid in any foreign country he’s visiting and transferred to face trial. If it happened to Maduro today, it could happen to Modi, or Mohammad bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia or anyone else, tomorrow. It’d be chaos. I mean, who is to stop, say, the Local police apprehending (with Xi Jinpeng’s connivance, of course) Trump when he is visiting Beijing for breaking some Chinese law, in which case what can Washington and the US military do short of initiating WW3? Such are the complications, the Trump actions have set in motion, considering the UNSC will do no more than what the League did faced by Ethiopia’s case.

Actually, it is in India’s vital interest to ensure a complete breakdown of the UN system by sharpening the big power clashes of interest.

India has benefitted nothing from the UN once Nehru, in his surfeit of good feelings for China offered the permanent security council seat offered India by the US and the Soviet Union in 1955-56 to it’s mortal enemy — Maozedong’s China. India has ever since been like the beggar with its nose on the glass panes — wanting what those in the inside have. The Indian government, with the benighted MEA in the lead, believe that it is only a matter of time and turn of events before India is permanently seated. That is about as likely as snow in The Delhi summer, because there’s China barring India’s entry. No, there has to be a new system, a new order, and it is time the Modi regime does what is needed — ek dhakka or dau, to collapse the UN as is.

The only Indians who benefitted from the UN and the Bretton Woods financial institutions — truth be told — are the hordes of diplomats and civil servants — and only because they could speak and draft documents in passable English language better than their Third World counterparts, and who parlayed short stints at these orgs and their numerous agencies into comfortable dollar-indexed pensions and residence abroad, or at home. The country otherwise got a short shrift. Recall how the US and the UK played Nehru such that he submitted the Kashmir issue to the UNSC in 1948 and permanently stymied India?

India  has no stake in the existing structures and systems of international order. The pity is our political leadership lacks the strategic druthers to break and disrupt such that a new order emerges where India has more say.

Posted in Afghanistan, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, Indian state/administration, Indo-Pacific, Internal Security, Islamic countries, MEA/foreign policy, Russia, russian military, society, South Asia, Special Forces, UN, United States, US. | Tagged | 59 Comments

A Foreign Policy So Adrift — in the New Year, that’s Bad News

Posted on January 1, 2026 by Bharat Karnad
President Donald Trump hosts a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Thursday, February 13, 2025, in the Oval Office.(Official Photo by Molly Riley)

As 2026 rolls in, the jauntiness and confidence in the country’s foreign policy on display just a year ago is nowhere in evidence. Then, Donald J Trump had been re-elected to a second term, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, egged on by his minister for external affairs with skin in the game, S Jaishankar, who had doubled down on centering India’s foreign policy on the United States and riding it’s coattails, felt they had hit jackpot. They acted as if Trump was the answer to their fervent prayers and they had four years to capitalise on the Howdy-doody spirit they hoped would propel bilateral relations to another level and pitch India into the big league. They plainly did not expect the cratering of ties that happened instead.

Op Sindoor was supposed to benchmark the convergence of interests. Of India and America reaffirming their interest in dealing squarely with terrorism in the process of stamping it out. Delhi had given Washington notice of the retaliatory action in the works for the ISI-managed Pahalgam massacre in April. Washington waited with interest. Except, Trump saw it as an easy occasion to claim a supernumerary role for himself as peacemaker in an operation Delhi had assured him would be so limited as to end before anything really started. And was genuinely surprised when the Modi regime in high dudgeon rejected any such role, putting a crick in his campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize —which Trump thought was his by right because his bête noire and predecessor, Barack Obama had won one in 2009 for doing even less!

But why was Trump surprised? Because he read Modi as another Third World hanger-on and anticipated he’d fall in line with the Trumpian charade of a great peacemaker let loose on an unwary world. The reaction to show Modi and India their place in his scheme of things swiftly followed. The foolish-sounding Asim Munir — replay his silly speech to a bunch of startled NRPs, comfortably settled in the West, getting an earful of jihad when all they sought was a photo op with the new Emir of Pakistan, suddenly was given audience at the White House he had been hankering for. Not to miss out on the main chance, he applied the grease on thickly for the gilded Trump to slide in on. And just as suddenly, Munir found himself anointed Trump’s man in S Asia and Pakistan as US’ go-to friend in the region. To fit his newly exalted station, he elevated himself to Field Marshal!

More importantly, Munir is now installed as the guardian of Trump Family’s billion dollar crypto interests and newly developed interest in that country’s gold and copper reserves in Reko Diq. Depending on how willing Trump is to protect his mining concessions, American secret forces — courtesy private armies run by Blackwater, a company controlled by Eric Prince, ex-US SEAL, for the Pentagon, will be deployed in Baluchistan and get into a fight with the hardy Baloch fighters, perhaps the doughtiest in the world. It’ll involve the Baloch gangs lording it over Karachi — these are not Dhurandhar fiction, turning fully against the intruder-invader Americans, and the facilitator Pakistani state, and then THE GAME will be on! Hopefully, India will have a say in what transpires. Because Russia and China will certainly be there and active, doing their utmost to make life immensely difficult for Washington, and putting the future of the state of Pakistan in serious jeopardy.

For the nonce, it has left Modi and Jaishankar baffled, seeing their foreign policy edifice of cards come crashing down around them. But, when in doubt, they reverted to what they consider safe — carrying on with the US on American terms. Thus, even as Trump has left Indian foreign policy in a shambles, Jaishankar continues with the country’s Indo-Pacific policy as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has decreed it as if nothing’s amiss, nothing has happened to push relations southward. It is Jaishankar’s touching belief in a policy of being more loyal than the king, nursing the fond hope that things will be back to normal. But when the new normal is less forgiving India should be more prepared, not less as is the case now.

Lacking any show of guts, will, and wiles by India, China is seemingly the master of all it surveys in Asia, daily offering not just Japan but also America provocations as an indecisive Trump recedes with tail between his legs, talking up a big ship navy one moment, and displaying readiness to cut a separate deal with Xi the next, leaving Delhi in particular up the proverbial creek.

Alas, these facts staring the Modi government in the face cannot be long ignored. Trumpian Washington has moved on from Modi, and India has to wean itself away from the chimeric comforts of a one-sided never-never relationship. The sooner it does so the better for the country and for Modi to save what face he is still left with. Rather than gear up for the challenge, the Indian government is choosing to show its rump to Beijing — more trade, more visas for Chinese businessmen, and more talk about more talks, as a gesture of submission.

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Widen the Siliguri Corridor, annex Rangpur Division of Bangladesh (Augmented)

Posted on December 21, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[The latest anti-India protest in Bangladesh]

Bangladesh is once again on the boil, and the internal situation there is trending such that India’s intervention may become necessary to once and for all to not only lance the Bangladeshi boil but to end a geostrategic problem threatening India’s territorial integrity. India cannot and should not any longer tolerate a country on its eastern flank threatening to become China’s military proxy and extremist Islamist outpost. With an inimical Dhaka making things difficult, potentially the Indian army’s XXXIII Corps can be pincered between Dok La and the Siliguri Corridor. It is time for India to militarily pinch off Bangladesh’s northern Rangpur Division, thereby straightening and rationalising the border roughly on the west-east Balurghat-Gaibandha line.

Delhi has a strong justification for a couple of territorial revisions. Firstly, the forcible amalgamation of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) – a campaign that would have had a head start had the army been sprightly and offensive-minded enough to take the Haji Pir Salient in Operation Sindoor, as argued in a post anticipating Indian retaliation after Pahalgam in late April. And secondly, widening the 60 km long, 17–22 km wide Siliguri Corridor — India’s “Achilles’ heel”, by absorbing Bangladesh’s northern-most Rangpur Division, because in Dhaka’s hands, it poses an existential threat. Widening the Corridor is, therefore, a national security imperative, especially now that Bangladesh is in military cahoots with China.

Integrating the Rangpur Division into Assam (not West Bengal) would increase India’s margin of error when dealing with the Chinese PLA entrenched in the Dok La trijunction of India, Bhutan, and China just 30 kms uphill from the Corridor. India can do it the easy, or the hard way. The ideal solution would be, of course, to induce Dhaka to negotiate a peaceful handover of the 16,185 sq km sized Rangpur Division to preempt a Bangladesh-China military hookup. The Indian government can offer to buy off outright the Division adjoining the Corridor on the  Bangladesh side for $10-$20 billion — thereby easing that country’s outstanding debt-problem (of $104 billion), as a one-time permanent settlement. Failing that, Dhaka would have to give an absolute and enforceable guarantee with a treaty that it will not, under any circumstances, create a strategic nexus or work militarily in concert with China (or Pakistan).

Should Dhaka ever, at any time, for any reason, resile from this undertaking, or falter on this guarantee– formalised in a bilateral agreement, India should feel free to slice off what a keen student of geostrategy, the Bharatiya Janata Party Chief Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has been ahead of the curve on this matter, identified in a May 2025 post on ‘X’ (previously Twitter), as the two corridors in Bangladesh at even greater risk – its ‘two chicken necks’ as he put it. He was referring to the 80 km long ‘North Bangladesh Corridor from Dakhin Dinajpur to the South West Garo Hills’, which if cut off would sever the  Rangpur Division from Bangladesh.

And the ‘Second [being] the 28 km Chittagong Corridor, from South Tripura to the waters of the Bay of Bengal. This corridor, smaller than India’s chicken neck,’ Sarma correctly observed, ‘is the only link between Bangladesh’s economic capital and political capital.’ But the threat of annexing the Chittagong Corridor as well can be held in abeyance to moderate any severe reaction by Dhaka to the loss of Rangpur. Indian government and the Assam state government and their agencies should keep up a steady drumbeat about the strategic vulnerability posed to the Indian northeast by an ill-disposed Bangladesh conniving with adversaries, so that a valid and substantive justification is available for decisive action to realise territorial revision.

The absorption of the Rangpur Division would firm up an already strong Indian military presence in the Corridor with the S-400 centered layered air defence now augmented with an additional brigade distributed over three strong points at Bamuni, Kishanganj and Chopra – a standing force that can, at any time, move in on the Rangpur Division.  Provocative statements about capturing the Siliguri Corridor and detaching the Indian northeast from the mainland regularly emanating from many quarters in Bangladesh only build up the Indian case for a surgical operation, offering India a rationale for militarily grabbing the territory that it must have. Assimilating a small piece of Bangladesh and converting the Siliguri Corridor into a toughened neck of a mountain goat — not anymore a chicken’s neck, would moreover give more room for the three army brigades deployed there.

In such a situation Bangladesh, aided by Pakistan, will no doubt canvas for the usual political US intervention to prevent Delhi’s remapping its border. But a  stern warning, quietly conveyed, about such interference imperilling the foundational accords and the FTA, should prove dissuasive. The US is far from  the super power it once was and needs every bit of help to deal with China, and India is not the country the Nixon-Kissinger duo tried to bully in 1971.  Further, America’s criticality to India’s economic future is exaggerated. After the initial downturn in exports post-Trump tariffs, did Indian industry and exporters not find alternative markets? Further, where else can Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook sell their wares or gather the massive data for their AI large language models under development? And can Silicon Valley import talent in bulk from anywhere else as it can from India? It would really help if the Indian government did not buckle under the slightest US pressure, rather than imposing counter-pressure, by accelerating the country’s movement to de-dollarising trade as BRICS is doing, and using other leverages. Stiffening the stance vis a vis the US combined with nuclear missile arming of states bordering China — conventional Brahmos missiles should only be a start, will send a complementary message to Beijing. A payback, like vengeance, is best served cold.

But the Modi government is unlikely to stand up to Washington or, nearer home, even initiate a diplomatic dialogue with Dhaka to explore a territorial transaction — a latter day “Louisiana Purchase” to buy the Rangpur Division, or to configure a treaty guaranteeing a denatured Sino-Bangladeshi threat to the Siliguri Corridor on the pain of decisive Indian military action. Moreover, a military operation for territorial revision against Bangladesh is beyond anything the Modi regime can even contemplate, considering it is, among major governments, possibly the last true believer in a liberal international order that frowns upon such activity and is nearly extinct, because the main props of this order — the US and Russia, are torpedoeing it. US President Donald Trump is spoiling for a fight with Venezuela, and is on the cusp of starting military hostilities to oust the Nicolas Maduro government, besides warning of other military actions to hive off Greenland from Denmark, at the European end, and at the Central America end, the Panama Canal Zone from Panama. And Russia is bloodily dismembering Ukraine.

But like the previous Indian governments, Modi’s too preemptively stumbles, bumbles, and bends its knee to Washington and Beijing, and inspires no confidence it will aggressively do the right thing by the country where national security is concerned. Look what happened in Sindoor, when Trump insulted and humiliated Modi and deliberately pedestalised “Field Marshal” Asim Munir, and all the Indian government did was diplomatically shuffle its feet.

If the ruling BJP — an avowed nationalist party lacks the guts to revise the Siliguri Corridor map, what can be expected from political parties — Congress and Trinamool Congress who, over decades, methodically padded the electoral rolls with Muslims from Bangladesh to stay in power in the bordering states of Assam and West Bengal?    

The issue of the 18 million-odd residents in the Rangpur Divisional area, however, is a socio-political problem that will have to be given careful consideration, and reasonably should, as part of the military operation, lead to this population being pushed into Bangladesh, to eliminate the possibility of Bangladeshi revanchism. Or it will only enlarge the communal demographic Bomb in the Indian east, and in the context of the diminution of the Hindu population in, and the institutionalised mistreatment of Hindus, in Bangladesh, it is a potentially volatile and nested issue the country cannot afford to have.

Hindus, who in 1947 constituted over 28% of the then East Pakistan territory, and 13% in 1971 at the time of the creation of Bangladesh with India’s military help, is now whittled down to less than 8% (some 13 million). The religious rightwing Jamaat-e-Islami party never forgave India for midwifing an independent Bangladesh — and its anti-India bias is what Jamaat and its extremist offshoots have been propagating, attended by progressively greater levels of violence. In Pakistan, the condition of Hindus is lots worse. The Hindu population plummeted from 14.6% of the population in 1947 to 1.2% (or, 3.1 million) today, in good part because the Hindu population transferred en masse to India, and since then owing, among other things, to regular abduction and forcible marriage and conversion of teenage Hindu girls — a programme backed by the mullahcracy.

This did not occur to me when I posted the original. But the 13 million Hindus remaining in BD are near about in size to the 18 million Muslims in Rangpur Division for full and clear transfers of populations — zeroing out Hindu population in Bangladesh for the 18 million Muslims in Rangpur Div, rendering BD a fully religiously homogenous country per Jamaat-e-Islami’s desire, and helping India obtain a more secure border in the east. This is a clean break solution that, as I argued in an earlier post, should have been the basis of Partition in 1947 as Dr BR Ambedkar, the sanest leader in the freedom movement, had strongly advocated.

By way of context, Muslims in India — 9.8% (35.4 million) of the population post-Partition has grown unhindered to some 14% (200 million) in the present day– the third largest Muslim population in the world.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indian Politics, Indian state/administration, Indo-Pacific, Internal Security, Islamic countries, MEA/foreign policy, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, russian military, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US. | Tagged , , , , | 49 Comments

Trump’s veto on India’s military transactions with Russia?

Posted on December 6, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi & Putin]

Before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down to talk turkey at the 23rd India-Russia summit yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published a story by its Delhi Bureau chief (https://www.wsj.com/world/india/putin-and-modi-deepen-relationship-that-has-drawn-trumps-anger-bef8f813) saying that Dmitry Peskov was wrong in signalling that the visit would result in consequential deals for “Russian jet fighters” (Su-57) and “missile air-defence systems” (S-400). “Indian officials”, the story said, “have quietly discouraged the idea that any such agreements will emerge during the visit.” US President Donald Trump’s displeasure at any arms deal in the offing was known to Delhi.

Considering that Peskov is the official spokesman for Putin and, in some circles, tagged as the man to succeed him in the Kremlin, calling him out this way was an extraordinarily risky thing to do — because what he said represented Putin’s views. While the Russian President may forgive the Indian government because, well, Modi, as if to compensate, laid on the praise for Putin a bit thick at the formal state dinner last night, Peskov may be less forgiving. Being publicly contradicted is a variety of personal slight, and diplomatic slights are rarely forgotten by men on the way up who eventually make it to the top. (Remember Mani Shankar Aiyar’s “chaiwallah” jibe against Modi that ended up in a huge circle of collateral damage around the Congresswallah?)

The official Indian position, moreover, was anticipated by Tina Dolbaia, a Russia expert at a WashingtonDC think tank — the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said, as the Journal reported, that “India would need tacit US approval to pursue major new deals [because] A US law allows for sanctions on countries that purchase major defence hardware from Russia.” What? Really?!!

So, Trump is driving India’s Foreign and Military Policy? I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt to the Modi regime, thinking it cannot be so daft, and believe that the formal decision to go in for the Su-57, S-400, and the miniature nuclear reactors with total tech transfer and production rights, is being held in abeyance — a ruse to be used in the mean time as leverage against America. Fine, but leverage to get what?

Surely, Delhi was not expecting a turnaround in the US strategy and to commit more fully to the Indo-Pacific because that, as the US National Security Strategy document released by the White House two days back, said clearly, won’t happen. The Trump Administration has indicated it will concentrate on itself — on one-sided trade deals, capturing energy sources and critical mineral reserves anywhere by any means, and on hemispheric security — Central and South America (whence the underway efforts to remove the Maduro regime in Venezuela). So, India cannot expect to once again be a free rider on security. It will have to rely on itself.

But, whatever Washington says, what does the Modi regime really desire from the US — ah, yes, technology! It is difficult to see just why people like Modi, Jaishankar (and the entire MEA caboodle — and, in this respect, refer the op/ed in today’s Indian Express by Shyam Saran, a former Foreign Secretary) see the US as a leader in advanced technology and as willing to part with it to India! When the facts are that, by almost any metric China is now in the technology vanguard in the most cutting edge areas — Artificial Intelligence, Quantum computing, semiconductors, digital connectivity, biotech, and greentech (see the eye-opening report on China’s tech leap by the Mercator Institute in Germany, https://merics.org/en/china-tech-observatory ), and the US has transferred NO technology or military hardware of any note to India in the last 70-odd years!

The only reason India may end up getting the F-35 is because Trump will succeed in pressuring Modi to buy this phenomenally useless combat aircraft — an absolute lemon and operational liability that spends more time on the ground than in the air. The US Government desperately needs foreign buyers to amortise the $2 trillion programme cost sunk into it by Lockheed and the American tax payer — and guess who stands out as the prime sucker they can unload this dud on? The petro-rich, brain-empty Arab states aside, you guessed it — INDIA with some officers holding high posts in the IAF actually salivating over getting it — the very definition of masochism! Trump is confident he can arm twist Modi and India to do anything and, with Jaishankar and IAF assisting, get him to buy anything, and that “good friend” Modi won’t hold his being repeatedly humiliated on Sindoor, or having his nose rubbed in the dirt by rewarding Pakistan and being pally with “Field Marshal” Asim Munir, against him!

But does the Indian government think it cannot do without the US on its side? When the 50% tariffs were imposed, Delhi hyperventilated but, after a period of discomfiture, found that the Indian exporters had found other markets. And that the Indian industry was generally humming, the dip in exports to the US notwithstanding. The lesson that Delhi should have drawn was that if the US is not all that critical to the country’s economy, it is even less relevant to India’s defence. This then should have been the baseline seriously to mobilise an “all of nation” effort and become genuinely atmnirbhar. Whenever the government has trusted local entrepreneurs and talent to deliver, they have. That hasn’t occurred.

One also despairs about the Indian government ever getting anything right at any time in the geostrategic field, even as one marvels at China getting every thing right all the time in every sphere, and now has Trump’s America running for its life! And this is the formidable adversary India, willy nilly, has to take on. Or, it can opt for the easy way out as it has always done — just lie down and let Beijing walk all over us, doing which India has had lots of practice over the years.

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A US Congress Report says Pakistan won Sindoor — the standard narrative hereon

Posted on December 3, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Field Marshal Asim Munir presenting a picture to PM Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistani guns supposedly in action against India in Sindoor, except it is a 2019 picture taken from the net of PLA firing guns in an Exercise in China!]

Having US President Donald Trump mouth off something or the other about Pakistan getting the better of India in the “3-day war” in May this year, is one thing. But when a US Congressional Report repeats it, and fleshes out the points, one may conclude that this is now the settled view of the US government. Given the power of the Western media and academia, this will be the standard narrative the world over that the Indian government and military will find impossible to counter.

This was predictable because, like on earlier occasions, the Indian military in this fracas again ended the Sindoor proceedings without a decisive result, handing the Pakistan army — which is more competent in crafting a winner’s narrative than actually fighting anybody (India, Baloch freedom fighters, Tariq-e-Taliban Pakistan), the opportunity with Trump’s help to put out the story of its great victory over Indian arms!

This is the reason I have long warned in my writings that if Delhi carries out military retaliation against Pakistani for terrorist acts within India, it should not go half-cocked or settle for other than a decisive physical result that cannot be denied by GHQ-Rawalpindi or Islamabad. Thus, immediately after the 2019 Balakot strike I pointed out that, if the message to be sent to Pakistan was not to resort to terrorism, it made no sense for the IAF to use a precision weapon — the Israeli Spice 2000 that, because of targeting errors, actually missed hitting what needed to be hit anyway, and uprooted a few trees. What should have been sent in was waves of strike aircraft dropping 500 kg bombs to flatten the Balakot hilltop, accompanied by a combat air patrol component for protection, inviting the Pakistan Air Force into a full-fledged fight.

That would have been unexpected and stunned the PAF and GHQ-R into inaction and compelled them to reconsider its use of the asymmetric weapon — terrorism. I said all this in a subsequent meeting in Vayu Bhavan with the then air chief, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, and a few of his Principal Staff Oficers, none of whom could come up with a satisfactory explanation for the selection of the weapon or, generally, the tactics.

After the Pahalgam massacre and with the Modi government preparing for an appropriate response, I made out the case on April 30 — a week before Op Sindoor, for the army to take the Haji Pir Salient and/or Skardu in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir which, because these features are across a ceasefire line, can be legally captured and assimilated into J&K. See “Capture of Haji Pir Salient and Skadru — eminently doable, is what the Indian military’s goals ought to be for the retaliatory actions” (at https://bharatkarnad.com/2025/04/30/capture-of-haji-pir-salient-and-skardu-eminently-doable-is-what-the-indian-military-ought-to-be-the-goals-for-the-retaliatory-actions/).

I argued in that and subsequent posts that the the loss of large chunks of POK alone would be disincentive enough and deter GHQ-R in the future from conducting terrorist strikes. But once again — talk of the Indian government and military happily repeating the same mistake! — the army stopped its action after hitting Muridke and Bahawalpur and offered a ceasefire on May 7 that was contemptuously rejected by Director General, Military Operations, Pakistan army — according to his Indian counterpart Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai. Then, as I disclosed, in reaction to Indian intelligence picking up Munir’s boast to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif based on the downing by PAF of several IAF aircraft that he’d “finish of” India in 48 hours, the Indian military attacked the night of May 9/10 and preemptively destroyed a whole bunch of value targets on the other side including, significantly, the PAF’s central command and control centre on Nur Khan Base, Chaklala. See “The ’48 hours” — is why Munir beame a Field Marshal?” posted on May 24, 2025https://bharatkarnad.com/2025/05/24/the-48-hours-is-why-munir-became-a-field-marshal/

With air dominance achieved, the army was offered on a platter an extraordinary opportunity to take Haji Pir, which it did not. Instead of instantly triggering Indian army units to converge on the Bulge from Uri, Mandi and Poonch, to take Haji Pir with the Indian Special Forces cutting of the salient on the north-south Uri-Poonch line, the army sat on its hands. Haji Pir is the area through which Pakistan army’s Inter-Services Intelligence infiltrates terrorists into Jammu and the Srinagar Valley.

If an “arm chair” strategist like myself could, see the political-military value in it, and conceive of such an operation, why did the army’s MO Directorate not plan and push for such action? Because, it turns out, nobody had anticipated the success of the Indian May 9/10 missile attacks and, therefore, no one in the army had planned for a contingent operation to capture Haji Pir, or any other major feature in POK.

The lack of decisive military results has time and again, cost India, the Indian government and military dear (a phrase I keep repeating!) in terms of serious reputational damage. Sindoor has incurred, perhaps, worse damage.

On November 18 was released the 2025 Report to US Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (at https://www.uscc.gov/annual-report/2025-annual-report-congress). Most such reports while attributing information in them to public sources are published after they are vetted by American intelligence agencies. Saying the May 7-10 clash “drew global attention” because Pakistan “leveraged” Chinese weapon systems and “live inputs” from Chinese intelligence, the Report stated categorically that “Pakistan’s military success over india…showcased Chinese weaponry” with the aerial combat, in particular, “serving as a real world field experiment.” And then added that “Pakistan’s use of Chinese weapons” had resulted in the downing of “French Rafale fighter jets” before conceding that of the three Indian combat aircraft shot down — a scaling down of Trump’s latest figure of loss of eight Indian aircraft, “not all may have been Rafales”, meaning at least one was (the one shot over Bhatinda that I mentioned).

Going forward, this then will be the narrative attached to Sindoor. All the bleatings by Indian government and military officials to the contrary, notwithstanding. Because we never learn any lessons, India, its government and its military are fated to repeat the mistake of retaliating small. Already, there have been a number of terrorist attacks since Pahalgam without an Indian response. So what’s the worth of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s threat he made after Sindoor that any terrorist incident will occasion a hard Indian reaction?

There’s something after all to the Israeli attitude — not the Hamurabi Code of an eye for an eye, but both eyes for just looking as if you mean to hurt!

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Putin and Modi’s moment of reckoning

Posted on November 24, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Putin & Modi]

Sometimes developments come to such a pass and a situation emerges that, one senses, teeters on a consquential turn of events. The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 4-5 visit for the 23rd India-Russia Summit is one such event. In many ways, it is a make or break situation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy. To its great demerit it early discarded his “India First” dictum, latching on, curiously, to Donald J Trump’s “America First” edicts, based on a complete and thorough misreading of the US President and American policy generally. It put a dunce’s cap on 30 years of Indian policy that espied premium and profit in edging closer to the US — a move begun by PV Narasimha Rao in the mid-1990s, and recommended by just about any and everybody prominent in the public opinion space at the time and since.

Among the policy influencers giving the lead was the late K. Subrahmanyam, ex-IAS, who held a special place in the Indian establishment, not least because he was virtually the institutional memory on national security matters whom, political leaders across the board, heeded. Unmoored from a Soviet Union that was falling apart by the hour, it was perhaps understandable that KS and others believed, as Narasimha Rao did, that India should close-in with America in the hope that doing so would benefit the country, help it to take giant economic and technological strides in the manner China did when assisted by the US.

The difference is China had Dengxiaoping India, unfortunately, had no comparable leadership. Modi promised much and delivered some, but consider how much more the country would have gained from a genuine unshackling of the private sector.

If the Nixon-Kissinger US policy raised China’s stock to an extent that it now rivals America, power-wise, this outcome has made Washington wary of repeating the same mistake with India. India will simply not be allowed to unilaterally mine the US for technology — one of the Modi government’s main reasons for intimate relations, nor will its exports enjoy the kind of sustained economic penetration Chinese industry was permitted. And almost every meaningful transaction will come with strings attached.

Thus, India was originally promised a total transfer of technology for the GE 404IN20 jet engine technology by Trump in his first term. He reversed it soon thereafter to Delhi’s chagrin, with the US President insisting Delhi buy these power plants. The demand is relatively huge — engines for as many as 352 Tejas light combat aircraft to be inducted into the Indian Air Force. In a 2021 deal, India contracted to pay $716 million for 99 engines. Only TWO engines were delivered as of September 2025! Undeterred, HAL signed a still bigger $1 billion deal for 113 jet engines. We can expect that the supply will be strung out and the Tejas bulk production delayed sporadically and in a manner to disrupt the smooth and steady induction into IAF and to periodically bring Delhi to its knees, as a means of extracting some concession or the other. In short, the Modi regime has made the success of the Tejas programme and IAF’s effectiveness hostage to passing American foreign policy interests.

In his second term, Trump has been especially harsh on Modi, believing that the Indian PM’s unwillingness to publicly acknowledge his fake role in ending Sindoor, cost him the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump’s bitterness led to his latest outburst a couple days back when he not only repeated his claim that it was the Indian PM who pleaded with him to restore peace with Pakistan, but — something new — that he had to threaten 350% tariffs on both countries to bring the military clash to a close!

Trump’s personal vendetta resulted in the imposition of 50% tariffs on Indian trade. And his threat to sanction Indian companies for importing Russian energy was activated just when he gave Kyiv a November 27 deadline to fall in line with his peace solution for Ukraine, or face an immediate cutoff of military aid and intelligence assistance! The timings of these two developments indicate that Russian energy imports by India was only an excuse for threatening US sanctions and increased tariffs — a punitive policy Trump had decided way back that Delhi would be subjected to no matter what, just so Modi was shown his place!

Except, Trump’s peace deal involves UKR President Volodymyr Zelensky agreeing to surrender all of the eastern region of Donbas to Russia that the two states have been bloodily fighting over for the past three years, and for Ukraine not to join NATO or even have an army! It is a warning to allies and partners alike that it is perilous for any country to have the US for an ally or partner, or rely on America for anything, least of all national security.

Yet, here was Defence Minister Rajnath Singh flying to Honolulu to sign on Oct 31 a 10-year framework for India-US defence partnership! Even as in the previous week, petroleum minister Hardip Puri, signed an accord for annual import of 2.2 million tonnes of liquified natural gas, declaring that this deal had nothing whatsoever to do with the Free Trade Agreement being negotiated, or the threat of US sanctions. The government agencies and private companies meanwhile moved to shutdown the Russian energy import channels! And the FTA negotiators from the commerce ministry too prepared to cede ground by incorporating provisions in it already offered the UK, EU, etc of opening Indian government procurement to international bidders, and to not require foreign tech companies to part with source codes or anything else that might remotely help India’s self-sufficiency drive in the military technology sector! And Delhi is on the point of surrendering the country’s digital sovereignty. The Modi government then showed just how much Trump means to his diplomacy, by having a rethink about the next G20 Summit just because Trump declined to attend it!

With Trump intentionally insulting and humiliating Modi any time a TV camera is near by, and his Administration missing no opportunity to hurt India’s economic and security interests, Modi and his government’s response has been startlingly submissive. There is so much holding back and ingratiating behaviour by the PM, his minions, and the Indian government, it is unbearable! It is as if Washington has done India no wrong, and even if it has, that it doesn’t really matter! It is an attitude that ulimately reflects on the country. To be so taken for granted reveals just what Trump thinks of India under Modi — not all that different, it appears, from how he perceives a pliant Pakistan under his favourite “Field Marshal”, Asim Munir!

If after 5 years of dealing with a wayward and impulsive Trump, who’s proved himself a consummate bully who will kick you in the nuts if you bend, Delhi keeps bending. May be even at this late date, Modi and Jaishankar and the rest of them could learn from Mira Nair’s spawn and New York city’s mayor-elect, Zoran Mamdani’s meeting in the White House with Trump. He won the elections in the face of Trump doing everything he could to defeat him. He held his own, talked back, and won praise from the US President, and had political analysts announce something known to all, except our MEA and Indian government, that Trump respects “strength and winners”. But, Modi and India are seen by Washington as neither strong nor as winners and is, perhaps, why the US President thinks that India can be reined in and jerked around at will to suit America’s purpose. Delhi to-date has, by its compliant posture and policies, only confirmed Trump-Washington’s view.

Why hasn’t Modi built on the political-economic understanding with Brazil and South Africa, by coupling the military cooperation aspects of IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) which periodically has its navies in the southern oceans, stressing this unique “three continents” initiative in military-security terms? And why doesn’t he talk to Putin about joining IBSA which group I have elsewhere advocated as BRIS — BRICS minus China, which would seminally serve India’s security interests at the expense of China’s? Delhi has to begin seeing its external relations in their military aspects, and stop leaning on the US whose attitude is “what can you do for me?”, not what we can do together.

It is in this situation that Putin visits Delhi. Russia’s biggest concern is not NATO or Europe, but how to keep America and China at bay. India is Moscow’s high card, and Kremlin is leaving nothing to chance. Russian commentaries suggest Moscow is a bit shaken by Modi regime uncharacteristically wagging its tail around Trump, even as he kicks India around. Putin thinks that this is the time to draw India closer, and decided to restore the relationship by pulling out all the stops. The Russians are offering a genuine 5th-gen Su-57 stealth twin-engined Su-57 — the US F-35 equivalent — with absolute complete technology transfer — no ifs and buts, including the jet engine, AESA radar, and the weapons load at around @$60 million — about $10 million more than what an off-the-shelf buy’d cost. It’d be a far more economical bridge to an era of unmanned aerial warfare.

Indians, who have been under the impression that Russian combat aircraft and other military hardware are not the equal of the Western items, must take publicity campaigns and advertisements a little too seriously. In metallurgy and rugged construction Russia excels; the difference in electronics/avionics is “athara-bees” (18-20) — in operational terms this slight gap means nothing. The real difference as I have stated repeatedly are innumerable pleasure trips for everyone in the procurement loop to Paris and Istress versus those to Moscow and Irkutsk (the main Sukhoi factory site)!

The Russian terms compelled Dassault to up its game for 114 Rafale as MFA (medium fighter aircraft) in addition to the 36 already contracted for, and to propose its production in India to supply the supposed overflow of international demand unmet by its French manufacturing units. But, it is a transaction that involves transfer of only 60% of the technologies!!

Dassault has made clear it will not budge from its position of “No source codes” for the aircraft — so it is just the usual assembly-screwdrivering deal from imported Semi-Kocked Down/Completely Knocked Down kits — HAL’s specialty. And Paris’s attitude was reflected in Dassault’s rather angry response to the German company Thyssen-Krupp Marine’s willingness to onpass the diesel HDW 214 submarine technology, including source codes, to India for the navy’s Project 75i. Because source codes means affording India not just the ‘know how’ but also the ‘know why’, and Paris was mad as hell that Berlin was giving away the store. It is the sort of development by a fellow West European arms supplier France would do its damndest to dissuade, deter and prevent.

With Dassault and France treating India with such disdain, the real question is why does Modi’s Delhi and the IAF show the Frenchies so much respect — getting slapped in the face only to have the Indian government turn around and want more of the same? It is as if official India sees no other source for military products!

Then again, if not India, which sucker, would keep buying over-rated, over-priced military goods? Ah, yes, I forget — we have oodles of dollars, we are a trillion $ economy!!

In this respect, see how the US government and Western arms suppliers quickly rose up as one to charge China with waging a public opinion campaign to bad-talk Rafale and try and push its own JC-10 post-Sindoor. When the Rafale is, if not a bonafide dud, it is near enough to one in that it nowhere delivers the promised performance. Its supposedly fantastical Spectra avionics suite at the heart of the machine, was a manifest disaster. It failed to pick up, as was revealed in my first post at the time of Sindoor, not just the Pakistan Air Force JC-10, the Chinese PL-15E air-to-air missile it fired from a safe standoff range deep withing Pakistan, but also the Saab 2000 Erieye airborne early warning and control system loitering and cueing the PAF aircraft and missiles to Indian aircraft that were then targeted. So, when the Indian Rafale was brought down over Bhatinda, its pilot had no idea who downed his aircraft, and how.

In the charged milieu of contested narratives, the Tejas 1A’s going down at the Dubai Air Show will provide fodder for the very strong foreign lobby in the IAF — which has always made a monkey out of the Indian government and the country, and will use this incident to push the acquisition of more Rafale. At a stroke, it will kill the Tejas programme and its successor AMCA project as retired Air Marshals publicly canvas for this aircraft even as those serving whisper into ever-receptive ears that Tejas is desi maal, nothing as good as the French stuff, and push for the “safer” Rafale aircraft!

The unpalatable truth is this: It was again a hot-doggin’ pilot who was at fault. Abhinandan in a MiG-21 picked a fight with a Paki F-16 and got shot down over Pakistani territory, begetting us the military-diplomatic embarrassment in February 2019. In Dubai, the Tejas pilot, Wing Commander Namansh Syal — trying to show off to a captive audience, over-estimated his own aerobatic-combat flying skills and competence and, as likely happened, in his downward roll, got disoriented — which happens to the best of fliers, and came too close to the ground to pull up safely — it was NOT loss of power! It is a clear enough case of “controlled flight into terrain”. The machine — the Tejas LCA — is NOT at all to blame. One hopes the court of inquiry investigating this mishap will come to this obvious conclusion. The record of such in-Service inquiries in the past, however, does not inspire confidence that it will do other than blame the machine rather than own up to pilot error, and put the Tejas programme in danger.

The Modi government — defence Minister Rajnath Singh ji, please ensure that this accident is not used as an excuse by the IAF to sideline the Tejas 1A, 2, and AMCA in any way — as the service may be inclined to do and as, in fact, it has done in the past. The Dr Raj Mahindra-designed HF-71/72 — successor to the Marut HF-24, was run right off the drawing board and into the trash bin in the 1970s by the IAF brass, just so the Jaguar — an Anglo-French plane could be purchased — a decision that sank the budding indigenous aerospace industry like a stone. Ironically, the Jaguar was far less steady in low level flight than the HF-24 it replaced. Indeed, in a straight contest the HF-72 would have beaten the Jaguar hands down.

More Rafales in the fleet is a bad option and should be ditched along with the ridiculous deal for producing the 1970s vintage M-88 jet engine that only a brain-addled combo of HAL-DRDO-IAF-Defence Ministry could have preferred over the Kaveri jet engine project that the private sector tandem of L&T and Godrej Aerospace had offered to takeover — which was negatived. This is how local defence industry gets (dis)incentivised by Modi’s atmnirbharta policy.

In any case, more Rafales would be disastrously wrong for two main reasons that the Modi government better ponder seriously. Firstly, because Rafale is only a 4.5 gen combat aircraft, just like the Tejas, when what the Russians are offering is a fully 5th-generation Su-57 and, as a 2-for-1 deal, also the single-engined Su-75. The two-seat configuration that IAF insisted on for the Su-57 (then labelled T-50) when the proposal for collaboration to jointly produce this aircraft was first mooted 15-20 years ago, is what is available to the IAF. And secondly, turning down this offer would signal Moscow that India is not interested in getting close to Russia or in retaining its “strategically autonomous role” in world politics, and that it will bandwagon with America — a proven high-technology Scrooge, whatever the cost. The occasional buys of S-400s and such, won’t convince Putin otherwise. India will then face the music of being frozen by Washington into a third rate power bereft of choices and without the latitude to stand up for itself, and being played by the US. This is what Trump has done to all of America’s allies of long standing — and Delhi wants to join this disillusioned crowd?

In contrast, the Russians assisted us in the most sensitive technology programme — the nuclear-powered ballistic missile firing submarine, and has never quailed from handing over the latest, most advanced tech, while the US makes a song and dance about parting with even 1970s technology, and cannot be expected to do any better in the future. Washington, for instance, is rethinking giving Australian Navy its Virginia class nuclear powered attack submarines. Australia! — part of AUKUS (Australia-UK-US), a revived Anglosaxon confederacy! In 1971, the Soviet Union offered the Tu-22 Backfire longrange high altitude strategic bomber the IAF led by PC Lal and the Government by Indira Gandhi lacking strategic sense, rejected. Now there are people in high places convincing themselves and Modi that Trump and his successors in office can be relied on to hand over remotely first-rate tech. What foolishness is this?!

The IAF Chief of Staff, Air Chief Marshal Aman Preet Singh is personally in a difficult spot, for another reason. He is reportedly in the running along with the more dyed-in-saffron army chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, to replace General Anil Chauhan as Chief of Defence Staff next year, with an additional 3 years of service tagged on. One false step, or a decision that is seen as going awry, will tank his chances. And the potential false step/flawed decision may pertain to the Su-57 or Rafale issue.

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‘Gandhian fantasy has destroyed India’s strategic mind’ | Dr. Bharat Karnad

Posted on November 17, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi at the Gandhi statue outside the Indian embassy (the building to his left) on Massachusetts Avenue, Washington DC]

A recent extended interview of mine conducted by Dr Hindol Sengupta, a professor at OP Jindal University, for his ‘Global Order’ podcast, may be of interest. It deals with a bunch of issues pertinent to current developments

An earlier interview, post-Sindoor — “India’s biggest mistake in Op Sindoor and why India must get a megaton bomb” may also be of interest at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Bsxwn_bKc

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Ego massage & policy outcome: Modi and Trump

Posted on November 10, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi & Trump]

It is a fascinating subject — how leaders take the measure of each other, what happens subsequent to the first few meetings when the impression gets cemented, and how that impacts policy. In one of their first meetings, the wartime US President Franklin Roosevelt, seeking to convey an idea that had occurred to him, barged into the British Prime Minister’s living quarters to discover Winston Churchill standing stark naked in the room. Unruffled, the PM famously drawled “Britain has nothing to hide!” The two leaders got along rather well thereafter!

Nothing as revealing has happened between the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the US President Donald J Trump. But both being, personality-wise, in the same narcissist-autocrat mould — with everything that happens within their governments, and by their governments, being about themselves, may have had mirror impressions of the other.

Very likely, Modi must have been reassured that, unlike the quicker-on-the-ball and more cerebral Barack Obama, who had a Pakistani as his room mate at Columbia University and was familiar with the subcontinental ways — Trump could be pata-oed with a lot of people screaming it up in support, and the colour and the frenzy of a big Indian tamasha. Whence the two big “get to know” PR events in Houston (“Howdy, Modi!” — arranged by the Indian embassy and the Indian NRI community) and in Ahmedabad (“Namaskar, Trump!” — courtesy the Gujarat State and Central governments) would have convinced him of this, especially as Trump, in his first term, wanted to make sure that every noisy American at the Houston circus would convert into a vote for him in the 2020 Presidential elections. Modi, perhaps, calculated that having Trump attend the Ahmedabad do would signal his closeness to Trump, and his ability to get India’s interests realised in the US and the West, and also help him out in the 2024 general elections.

Modi’s belief that he could get what he wanted from the Trump Presidency was, however, misplaced. Indeed, over the past decade, he was able to extract nothing of note from America, even as his government has shaped not just its energy policies around American santions, but India’s relations generally with Russia, and with Iran, while surrendering a great deal of digital sovereignty to boot as well (as revealed in the previous post). But Modi’s flattering of Trump reached its limit when the US President virtually demanded the Indian leader endorse the American’s self-propagated case for the Nobel Peace Prize for terminating Sindoor. Had Modi given in, there was no guarantee Trump’d have kept from hosting Munir and moving the US policy Pakistan-wards. But there was every certainty the Prime Minister would have had the somewhat tenuous credit for Sindoor from being slashed from underneath him providing, at the very least, a lot of campaign fodder to the opposition in the Bihar state elections.

So, it is clear Trump has got most everything he desired from Modi, including huge multi-billion dollar purchases by Delhi of transport aircraft, P-8I maritime recon planes, and vintage M-777 mountain-use light howitzers. And, especially, the “four foundational accords” — the 2016 Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), the 2018 Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), the 2019 Industrial Security Agreement (ISA), and the 2020 Basic Exchange and Coooperation Agreement (BECA). India thus placed itself squarely in the crowded American security tent in Asia without obtaining any real security benefits and, worse, shortchanged itself in terms of negotiating leverage. Sharing of spatial digitised data vide BECA has permitted the US, for instance, an entry point into the Indian satellite communications setup, meaning it may have gained for Washington access that can be used, if its interests so dictate, to onpass critical military information to Pakistan, China, any other adversary!

The only thing the Modi regime retained for Delhi was the decision on the logistics support the US forces could avail of, but only on a case-by-case basis, and the level of participation in the military activity of the Quadrilateral of US, Japan, Australia, India. The fact that India had, in fact, got little in return for putting out with so much was evidenced in the tremendous frustration expressed by many who served in the US government about India’s not doing that little bit extra!

Of course, Delhi’s stalling tactics, and unwillingness to engage militarily in Quad Indo-Pacific operations more fully were also because Russia had to be kept in good humour both as arms supplier and as source of critical mil-tech that Washington would not part with, and as counterweight to both America and China. The US understood this as India furthering its traditional balancer role. With the Quad not pulling its weight, the Biden Administration in 2021 announced the formation of AUKUS — Australia, UK, US, an uncomfortable reminder to the peoples of the Indo-Pacific of an old world Anglo-saxon confederacy.

Now, let’s view this picture from the American angle.

Trump is a professional New York city schmoozer — who cultivated pals everywhere — no knowing when someone might be of use! — to advance his family-commercial-real estate interests. As President in his second term, he has only become more brazen in exploiting his position, leaving no opportunity unexploited to increase his personal and family wealth. This was the reason why Trump cottonned on to Asif Munir, who promised to lay Pakistan at Trump’s feet to use as he saw fit. Islamabad facilitated a crypto currency base in the country — a move to personally enrich Trump, who has invested hugely in it, and offered concessions to US mining companies to extract whatever minerals they can find in the country. And he hinted, after his 2nd White House lunch and meeting with Trump of Pakistan’s pleasure in playing the Central Asia frontier policeman and outpost for America and Western interests, and assist in curtailing China in the region. And Pakistan’s history of having its generals in the US pocket and, more formally, as a longtime American client state quickly cemented the new deal. The US has enough of a hold on the Pakistan establishment and armed forces — as it has, to be fair, on the senior-most echelons of the Indian bureaucracy, MEA, and military (with liberal entry visa/green card issuals for progeny, as well), to ensure this.

Modi was a less known commodity to Trump, but the deals he secured from the Indian PM without parting with much in exchange was because Modi wore his admiration of America and American life too much on his sleeve not to have his American counterpart exploit it to the fullest, which Trump did. All it required was for Trump to pay Modi attention, talk up their supposed “friendship” and, from the other end of his mouth, skewer the Indian Prime Minister with his insistence that it was he who stopped Op Sindoor cold, and in his latest pronouncement, that 8 aircraft were shot down in the 3-day fracas — the tally of Indian losses apparently going up everytime Trump opens his mouth! It is, in fact, Trump turning Modi’s trademark hugs and embraces inside out to string Modi along, even as he plays kitty-ball with Munir, letting slip a reference about Pakistan conducting “nuclear testing” aimed at simultaneously unsettling India and pumping up Islamabad.

What could be plainer? Well, the Panchtantra tales has precisely such cautionary story — recall the one about the monkey inserting itself between two cats squabling over a pat of butter only to have the ape, doling out a “balanced” share of the goody to each, which involved, it first divying up the butter and, in the process of balancing, taking a little from the portion of one cat and then from that of the other cat until the monkey consumed all of it! Same monkey business here, once again, which, as on earlier occasions, has ended up equating/hyphenating India and Pakistan, cutting Modi and India to Pakistan’s size and proportionately elevating Munir and Pakistan!!!

The Modi government has not learned anything after repeated humiliations heaped on the Prime Minister and insults to India. Now the Trump Administration is dangling a US presidential visit to keep Delhi on the hook. Not sure why such visits are so prized by the Indian government and why Indians generally so desire to please the US and the West, and are prepared to suffer no end of indignity, and to jump through all kinds of hoops.

The irony is that while Munir and Islamabad are entirely aware that whatever the cost to the country of playing up to Trump and the US, the benefit to Pakistan is in the deliverables by way of military assistance — especially crucial tactical military intelligence feeds in realtime that have made a difference in the past, Modi and New Delhi have deluded themselves into believing, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that it is they who are in the driver’s seat, and able to get more out of continuing to be nice to Washington!

The question to ponder is whether there’s a point in the bilateral relations beyond which the Modi regime will not allow itself to be pushed, and won’t budge? There seems to be no such point — to wit, the Free Trade Agreement being negotiated which, reportedly, has all sorts of giveaways and concessions to America. Except, there is a worrying trend for Modi, who has invested so much political capital to stay on the right side of Washington. One of the main pillars of his US policy — Indians and the NRI community in America cultivated as potential South Asia policy influencers, are under assault from Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) support base what with the techie flow channel (higher education visa = green card, Indian IT techie posting = green card) being shut down, is crumbling right before our eyes.

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India is losing its digital sovereignty. Blame the combo of Jaishankar & Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agarwal

Posted on October 30, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agarwal]]

According to sources not far removed from the policy Establishment, the 1994 Manipur cadre IAS officer and Commerce Secretary, Rajesh Agarwal, has surrendered India’s digital sovereignty by succumbing to, what else, US pressure. A draft-Free Trade Agreement (FTA) he has negotiated and awaiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approval, accepts the American viewpoint that India’s “digital trade barriers” are a hindrance to free trade and will have to be done away with.

Nothing in New Delhi ever remains secret for long, and the bureacratic grapevine about the arrangement to further the FTA with the US, is even more revealing. Significantly and, perhaps, with the PM’s consent, where the FTA negotiations with America are concerned, Agarwal reports NOT to his own minister, Piyush Goel, but directly to the Minister for External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Jaishankar, it may be recalled, has engineered the policy of appeasing Trump. And, yes, is the same person who, as Joint Secretary (Americas) in MEA and lead negotiator in 2008 of the 123 Agreement for civilian nuclear cooperation with the US, surrendered India’s sovereign right to conduct nuclear testing and to obtain a tested thermonuclear deterrent. It advanced, in the process, not the country’s interests but the longstanding American nonproliferation goal of restricting India to the low-yield fission weapon threshold.

There’s no end to how much, and how methodically, Jaishankar is stripping India of its strategic independence. The surrender of digital sovereignty now — a generous giveaway to the US, is something that American trade representatives plainly did not expect so easily to obtain. Jaishankar is the Indian government’s expert in waving the white flag before the engagement even begins and, it is hardly surprising that he wrangled the authority to shape the FTA to benefit America. Courtesy Jaishankar, Bye! Bye! India’s absolute right to thermonuclear security and now digital security. Jaishankar can plead that in 2008 he did the Prime Minister’s bidding, and that it was Manmohan Singh who demanded he secure that agreement at any cost, because it would be an economic “Open Sesame” for the country to tap into the wealthy US market and, in the bargain, to reform and liberalise its own economy. Is Jaishankar’s excuse henceforth to be that sacrificing India’s digital sovereignty is what Modi instructed him to do?

Modi and India are not in the same league as Xi and China, of course. But the contrast in the reaction of the two countries to Trump’s economic bullying could not be starker, more different. It reflects in China’s case the “long view” strategic mindedness that has always animated Chinese policies leading to its capture over the past two decades of all rare earth resources outside PLA-occupied Tibet and Xinjiang for use in case the US ever acted up. That time was now, and no sooner Trump issued a ban on advanced software and semiconductor chips to China, Xi cutoff all supply of Chinese-controlled rare earths magnets in particular — central to electric vehicles, the automobile industry and industry in general, and to the production of sophisticated American military hardware, until Trump cried Uncle! The US President’s request for a meeting with Xi is being pondered by Zhongnanhai even as Trump is getting hot under the collar! This is strict reciprocity — an immediate tit-for-tat measure that merely confirmed to Washington that it was China, and not Modi’s India, it was dealing with.

The Modi goverment, on the other hand, quickly fell in line with the ever fluctuating Trump diktat. It bought energy from Russia initially because Washington okayed it. It was misrepresented by Jaishankar among others in the government as India asserting its sovereign right to buy oil cheaply from wherever it is available. Indeed, Trump publicly declared and repeated at the recent ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur that Modi in fact ended Op Sindoor after he threatened India with “250% tariffs”, and how the Indian PM promised to zero out Russian oil imports. Sure enough, the pretence of ‘national interest’ prompting Indian oil buys from Russia lasted only until Trump sanctioned the Russian energy majors Rosneft and Lukeoil earlier this week whereupon the public sector Indian Oil and the private sector Reliance, taking their cue from the government, quickly changed tack and stopped buying Russian oil on a coin. So, the conclusion was right after all that India is suseptible to pressure on all issues and on all counts, Trump’s pressing Modi led to the Indian government terminating the oil trade with Russia.

Trying to cover the government’s tracks on preemptive compliance with the US policy changes, Jaishankar complained ineffectually about the energy import standards being unfairly imposed — China has not been so sanctioned, etc. Boo-hoo! And to squawk about the Ukraine War needing to end so India can resume oil supplies from Russia implying, note this, acceptance of the fact that Trump’s decision is what persuaded the Modi dispensation to sever India’s connection to Russian oil!! So Trump essentially decides who India buys oil from, not India’s national interest! If one part of Trump’s public declaration is correct — that his oil sanctions on Russia ended India’s Russian oil purchases, how can the other part of the same Trumpian statement issued in the same breath — that he forced an end to Sindoor be “arrant nonsense” as senior Indian officials got up the guts to label it some 5 months after the event?

Meanwhile, surprise, surprise, Indian imports of American oil shot up to nearly to half a million barrels per day, making up the projected Russian oil cutoff. The Indian government’s patent inability to look beyond its nose meant that it was not prepared to react by instantly switching its trade, except an alternative market for Indian goods was not cultivated. It placed India in its familiar role as beggar, pettitioning Trump for reduced tariffs and for a waiver of sanctions on Chabahar — the Iranian port central to India’s Afghanistan and Central Asia policy, when keeping this channel open for trade serves the US interest as well. With Washington extending its waivers, the impression of India as a client state was confirmed. Trump then bolted down this impression and worse by saying as regards Sindoor that both Munir and Modi told him that “You should let us fight”!! At a stroke it elevated Trump/US as the entity to decide whether the two countries fight at all, and personally equated Munir and Modi and, at one remove, Pakistan and India! And then cushioned the blow by calling the two countries “tough people”. REALLY!

Whatever the truth, the fact is Trump at once mocked Modi and to, blunt the sharp edge of his mockery, laid it on a bit thick on the flattery front, hoping the Indian PM can be flattered out of reacting badly as well. Trump: “I’ll tell you what, Prime Minister Modi is the nicest looking guy, [someone] you’d like to have as your father” and then added, “[Modi] is a killer,…tough as hell.” [All Trump quotes in Jennifer A. Dlouhy, “Trump says He Threatened 250% Tariffs on ‘Killer’ Modi”, Bloomberg, Oct 29, 2025, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2025-10-29/trump-says-he-threatened-250-tariffs-on-killer-modi-pakistan ]

Flattery works — who should know this better than Trump?! Succumbing to its also covers up for the Indian government’s strategic myopia — intrinsic to its decision and policy making, and is an official trait welcomed hugely by the US, the West, and China who waste no time exploiting to the max.

So the US not only dictates who India buys its energy from, who it can fight and how, but also its geopolitics!

With regard to the FDA with the US, what has Agarwal got in return for India giving up its digital sovereignty, pray? Reportedly, reduced tariffs to the 15% level!? Satisfactory, Mr. Jaishankar?

When Shakespeare’s Richard III had his horse lanced from underneath him at the Battle of Bosworth Field, his lament — “My kingdom for a horse” is apparently taken literally as a negotiating strategy by Messrs Jaishankar and Agarwal — who, between them, have, in fact, given away strategic India for a song!

The Polish sociologist Stanislaw Andrezki aptly described India as a “land of subjugations”, but know this, that in the nuclear-digital age that is upon us, foreign subjugation is actually internalised and mainstreamed in the manner Jaishankar has done in gutting India’s thermonuclear weapons, and now his bureaucratic tool, Agarwal, is doing in kicking India’s digital sovereignty over the side, vide negotiated accords, albeit accompanied by rousing nationalist rhetoric on the sidelines voiced by Modi, Rajnath Singh and assorted others. Cry, the beloved country (the title of Alan Paton’s sorrowful account of his benighted homeland — the apartheid-ridden South Africa, that now fits the 21st century to-date India to a T, but for quite different reasons)!

Agarwal’s resume’ refers to an MA from IIFT (Indian Institute of Foreign Trade) run on subventions from Commerce Ministry. That makes him, unusual for GOI, a round peg in a round hole. But, does he understand even a bit of the digital world he has to have a grasp of? Assuming he does, the trouble is in the talks to hammer out an FTA with the US, he is taking his marching orders from Jaishankar — a generalist with no known specialisation other than international affairs (JNU) but with talent for an aphoristic turn of phrase — useful in a diplomat, but not essential, and a pronounced tilt US-ward, evidenced in his career in MEA. So, lack of domain knowledge bothers Jaishankar little, as long as the negotiation is tending in the direction of the Big Tech Companies — almost all American, which is what Agarwal is meant to ensure.

But what’s digital sovereignty all about?

No country in recent times has been as profligate as India in gifting away the technology space and space for technological growth and development with indigenous talent and resources within the country. The government sector does not seem to be even aware of what’s at stake. Take the example of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) — a single platform for all financial transactions described as a “unique achievement and only sovereign digital ecosystem winning worldwide appreciation” according to one assessement by experts. News reports suggest that NPCI is teaming up with OpenAI — the leading US Artificial Intelligence firm — talk of getting the fox into the henhouse! — OpenAI could then weaponise the platform, unbenownst to NCPI, and discover one day, as Nayara Energy — the Indo-Russian oil refining and marketing company did, that Microsoft hired to provide services, shutdown Nayara operations without any notice! This is but a taste of what may be in the offing by being reckless in allowing big tech companies entry into the Indian milieu. Imagine the disruptive power Washington would wield through the agency of OpenAI over the Indian economy should this collaborative venture take off! The Modi PMO should instruct NCPI to void the deal immedately and kick OpenAI out of its premises before any real harm is done. In fact, no Indian LLM (large language model) under development should be allowed any foreign connection for any reason. And that guardrail has to be erected as of yesterday!

Nayara Energy is but one instance, of the Indian government allowing a noose to be placed around NCPI. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is actually working with Indian government tech incubators to guarantee that the next IP (Internet protocol) model is erected on AWS platform! Talk of lacking any common sense, leave alone displaying tech competence. The US-led West and China, moreover, have been relentless in compromising the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This is no bad thing to happen because under its aegis the Indian government has surrendered “significant industrial policy space”. The threat to undermine it would be enough during this WTO crisis for India to win back this space. Instead, the Commerec Ministry has made concessions on source code access — India cannot anymore demand source codes for any capital hardware purchase, including in a license production deal, cross-border data flows, open government data, compulsory licensing, and asymmetrical access to government procurement — most of them made during Agarwal’s time as Commerce Secretary.

Movement of skilled labour is a big agenda point for Modi to consolidate his electoral hold on the growing Middle Class, but even when the US and European states have conceded this point, it has not stopped Trump, say, from closing the H1B visa channel, or protecting the rights and the physical wellbeing of Indian techies working in America, what with MAGA gunning for them and for any ethnic Indian, in fact. But this seamless flow of skilled labour surely cannot explain, leave alone justify yielding on the country’s “core digital interests”. Rather than using Indian brainpower, as the abovementioned assessment says, “as leverage ” we are actually allowing the US and the West through their Big Tech Companies to pay them with what they most want from India — high-tech manpower hires to assist them in digitally colonising India.

The US is, moreover, insisting on provisions in the FTA that prevent “(1) India from imposing taxes on digital players headquartered in the US, (2) India from leveraging its data advantage and creating national digital champions, including through sharing anonymised government data exclusively with Indian domestic entities, and (3) India from effectively regulating the digital sector.”

How does all of this serve the National Interest, Modiji??

The US, according to those who have knowledge of trade negotiations, “can secure the above and many other [insidious] objectives in the digital sector by getting India to agree to JUST THIS ONE SENTENCE in the trade accord: Both countries agree to grant non-discriminatory treatment to digital services, and suppliers of these services, from the other country.” It cannot be allowed to be inserted/included in the FTA text — and Agarwal better be alert to any variations on this theme being brought into the working draft document.

The homework has already been done by well-meaning Indian entities desirous of protecting the country’s sovereignty and digital space in its entirety that people like Jaishankar have made playthings of. The pity is Prime Minister Modi does not seem to quite appreciate the looming digital danger staring the country in the face. He seems happy to give audience to Sundar Pichai of Microsoft and Satya Nadella of Google/Alphabet in the expectation that these India-origin types will think of India’s interest, when, in reality, these NRIs, as the Indian government, ought to have realised by now are worse than useless in speaking up for India and its interests, what to speak of advancing them.

Recall that with Trump’s punitive policies at a high pitch not a single NRI notable spoke up for India; many of them actually argued that India had a “bad narrative” on Op Sindoor they couldn’t possibly propagate, when the truth is the Indian techies in America are fair weather sailors, happy to board the Indian ship, join in Howdy Modi! kind of circuses in America, but just a bit of headwind gets them into a tizzy and into a “distanced from India”-mode. India owes them nothing. The Nadellas and the Pichais of the world look out for themselves and the US firms they head, especially when the bottomline suggests that “the potential gains of a digital sovereignty framework could be in the trillions of dollars [for India] as compared to a few billions invested [in India]” by these foreign entities.

And if the United States of America is Modi’s great model to emulate, perhaps, the Prime Minister and his minders should look at how the Trump government has moved to impose sovereign oversight on foreign companies, like Tik Tok. It ringfenced it from its Chinese parent, subjected its algorithm use to domestic control/royalties, and confined sensitive operations to ‘transparent’ clean rooms” thus ensuring foreign tech companies “comply with national rules when governments act decisively.”

Ironic then that this is the US that insists the presumably free, independent and sovereign Republic of India not take steps needed to guard its own sovereign digital space and industry in every way possible in the manner Washington has done to protect its digital environment. And, more alarmingly, that this is the United States of America dictating to the Modi government to leave “Digital India” open to “free trade” and extremely vulnerable to American companies, and to other international predators.

The digital peril Messrs Jaishankar and Rajesh Agarwal have deliberately, and with great forethought, put the Indian nation in, suggests that Digital Sovereignty is no part of the Indian government’s thinking on internal or external security. The supposedly hypernationalist regime that Narendra Modi runs in New Delhi is seemingly OK with all this.

Posted in Afghanistan, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Cyber & Space, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Indian state/administration, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Internal Security, Iran and West Asia, Islamic countries, MEA/foreign policy, nonproliferation, NRIs, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, sanctions, society, South Asia, South East Asia, space & cyber, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, Terrorism, Trade with China, United States, US., war & technology, West Asia, Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

Chances of Modi being made a monkey

Posted on October 22, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi and Trump]

The 47th summit of the 10-member ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) and five dialogue partners — India, Japan, South Korea, US, and China is set to begin in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, October 26. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be attending, as will US President Donald Trump. The MEA hopes that the two can meet on the sidelines. What the ASEAN expects to get out of this conference is Trump’s promise to reduce US tariffs.

The Indian government, which has no sense or instinct for US domestic politics or American foreign policy, has in mind something more ambitious. Modi means to use the occasion to turn on his charm and try and put the derailed bilateral ties back on track, and otherwise to convince Trump about the wrong path he has taken by befriending Munir and Company at India’s expense.

This effort has about as much chance of success as a spitball’s in hell!

In fact, there is every reason to expect that Trump will exchange some inanities with Modi, mention their warm friendship a couple of times, and agree with Modi on issues a, b, and c, only to come out to the waiting media and announce that Modi had approved x, y and z, involving matters the two leaders never touched on! And that’s the danger no leader can avoid when meeting Trump. But Modi has lots more to lose than the run of the mill European leaders massaging his ego.

Trump’s trademark diplomatic method of confusing, inventing issues out of thin air, bamboozling the world, and forcing the leader he has lately been with to scramble and backpedal, and generally to be on the defensive, pleading that something else all together was actually discussed. It is as unique as Modi’s equally familiar opening with hugs and embraces that have by now grown stale, lost its element of novelty and surprise. Trump has time and again bet on the fact that India wants more from the US than America seeks from India, and the difference is what, he thinks, provides him with the leverage and the latitude to sculpt a narrative designed to show him as beating up on a difficult and recalcitrant India.

Modi and his MEA minders should ensure that the Indian PM never again agrees to any one-on-one meetings with Trump, even less a joint Press conference — the US President’s favourite stomping ground!

Fiction and sheer invention being Trump’s diplomatic oeuvre, Modi is at a distinct disadvantage with the Western media, and why I have been warning against the Indian PM meeting with Trump alone at any time for any reason. Because that only offers the American another opportunity to make a monkey out of Modi. Trump’s diplomacy was recently on display when he loudly claimed the Indian Prime Minister had promised to terminate all energy imports from Russia when, as the MEA was at pains to point out, Modi had undertaken to do no such thing. On Sept 16, Trump called to offer Modi birthday greetings, and on Oct 22 Diwali Greetings!

No publicly personal relationship has quite crashed and burned as the ties between Modi and Trump did, post-Sindoor, with the latter making it a point to insult the Indian PM and go full-punitive against India and all because the latter would not, pet cockatoo-like or, more appropriately, Field Marshal Asim Munir-like, roll over and parrot to the Press the US President’s worthiness for the Nobel Peace Prize for ending Op Sindoor and, nonsensically, saving the world from a nuclear armageddon!

In retrospect, Modi made the gravest strategic error by calling the White House after the Indian missiles had been fired at the terrorist facilities in Muridke and Bahawalpur on May 7 to inform the US President that the Indian strikes were limited retaliation for the Pahalgam massacre.

Why did Modi feel compelled, besides Jaishankar putting him up to it, to inform Trump at all? The US National Security Agency — the largest most technologically advanced and powerful intelligence agency in the world whose satellites would have picked up the Indian missile firings and relayed it instantly to the NSA processing centre outside Washington DC via the Australian relay station at Pine Gap, outside Alice Springs and, with a time lag of just a few minutes, reached Trump. So Modi was telling him nothing he did not already know. But the act of Modi telling him is what marked India out in the pecking order as a subsidiary power trying to preempt Trump from lashing out. It did not work.

Not sure why Modi feels it imperative to please the US President, when Trump insults and humiliates in return. Because going strictly by his transactionalist tilt, it is Trump’s America that will be hard put strategically to replace India in the Indo-Pacific, to economically find a market as vast as India’s to sell to, and to replenish its STEM talent pool with year-on-year hordes of incoming Indian graduates from IITs and regional engineering colleges that provide state-subsidised education that American companies polish up. Indian talent has fueled the Silicon Valley’s rise and helped the US remain on top of the technology mountain.

And yet it is India and Modi that act the supplicant when they hold more cards than Delhi credits itself with. Trump’s cabinet colleagues are beginning to realise this and why India cannot be bullied into a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) or anything else, or force it away from buying Russian military hardware — more S-400s and possibly also the Su-57 multi-role combat aircraft (after the fiasco the French Rafale turned out to be in Sindoor, leading to whole squadrons being restricted to faroff tarmacs). And why India will continue to buy oil from Russia, soon from the Arctic Sea reserves as well — and Trump can go take a hike! Have you seen how all the loud mouths talking trash to India — Counselor to Trump, Peter Navarro, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, have gone silent?

But Trump is motivated foremost by pecuniary benefits to self and family, and here the burgeoning market for high end luxury apartments/villas with the Trump stamp — the characteristic goldish blingy garishness, offers Delhi direct leverage. The Wall Street Journal the other day carried a newsreport that proclaimed India as the “Trump Organisation’s biggest foreign market for real estate projects”. Trump is raking in the moolah (some $12 million in 2024) for simply lending his name to real estate developers in Gurgaon and elsewhere in the National Capital Region (NCR) — among them Pankaj, Roop and Basant Bansal (and their M3M Group), the Lodha Group, and the RDB Group in Kolkatta, most of them, unsurprisingly, in trouble with the law on charges of money laundering, securities fraud, bribery, tax evasion, and/or defrauding customers.

May be the best way to impress Trump would be to darken the prospects of his family’s 12 new NCR real estate development projects that have been anounced, by dragging these Indian real estate developers deeper into a legal morass and begin, for instance, by restricting the flow of license fees on these new projects to the Trumps. As many investigations have shown, like the Indian developers he consorts with, Trump too has had serious run ins with the law. Better still, the Indian Tax and Enforcement Division, and Haryana state police and other agencies, can begin turning on the heat until these Trump-friendly Indian developers start squealing and, the Bansals, who are supposed to be in thick with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, ask Modi to treat them with kindness, and approach Eric Trump, the President’s son, fronting the Trump enterprise, to have his father talk to Modi for relief that can then be doled out in spoonfuls to keep the Trumps hanging. It will give the Indian PM and government the much needed upper hand.

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence procurement, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Ocean, Indo-Pacific, Japan, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, Terrorism, United States, US. | Tagged , , , , | 20 Comments

Modi Government’s death blow to Indian defence industry & IAF chief’s fantastical claims — 2 Notes

Posted on October 7, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Heavy Vehicles Factory, Avadi]

This is what a pink paper, not known for criticism of government policies, said on Oct 3 about the Modi regime’s move to allow Indian subsidiaries of foreign arms manufacturing corporations to bid for defence procurement contracts as Indian entities. “In a move that could severely undercut India’s domestic defence industry, the Modi government is considering allowing wholly owned local subsidiaries of foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to qualify as ‘Indian vendors’ in defence procurement. This long-pending demand of multinational arms makers, discussed by a special task force led by former cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba, threatens to hand the lucrative defence market to global giants while sidelining homegrown firms. Instead of strengthening indigenous manufacturing, the government appears set to empower foreign corporations at the expense of Indian companies, raising questions about its oft-repeated rhetoric of Atmanirbhar Bharat.” (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/govt-likely-to-recognise-foreign-defence-companies-local-arms-as-indian/articleshow/124278267.cms)

The instant conversion of a foreign company into an Indian one that foreign equipment manufacturers have been clamouring for just so they can crowd the genuinely home-grown Indian companies out of the bids for military hardware, is recommended by a taskforce chaired by Gauba, whose tangential exposure to defence issues was as a young IAS officer appointed private secretary to defence minister George Fernandes in the late 1970s. It means, essentially, that he is another successful babu, our very own “Sir Humphrey” (from that BBC comedic takeoff on the British civil service — “Yes, Prime Minister!”), who has next to no domain expertise in defence and national security but does fine winging it in all policy areas, just so things don’t change very much! And a policy failure is portrayed as roaring success!

It is exactly the sort of civil servant Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have a liking for even if what Gauba advises be done will gut especially the Indian private sector defence industry that is still at the takeoff stage because it has been prevented from actually taking off by the BJP government’s atmnirbharta policies that promote only superficial arms self-sufficiency.

That Modi, like Gauba, cannot distinguish between “Made in India” — where the entire weapon system is designed, developed, and produced in the country, and “Make in India” where any foreign goods can be imported in disaggregated kit-form and assembled or screw-drivered — something the Defence public sector units — HAL, Mazgaon, the Avadi tank factory, et al, have been doing for the past 70 years, was pointed out by me way back in 2015 or thereabouts when the PM started talking about atmnirbharta without detailing his agenda. 11 years later we know what that means.

It is not that Modi (or a Gauba) does not understand the difference, but that he is into taking a shortcut for a policy that far from making the country atm nibhar will drive it further into foreign arms dependency while sounding the deathknell for worldclass private sector companies that have come up — not because of, but despite, the government. The L&Ts, Godrej Aerospace’s, Bharat Forge’s, Mahindra, and hundreds of other large firms and SMSEs that produce components, ancillaries, and sub-assemblies that have together built nuclear submarines, complex space systems and what not, now find themselves up a creek, even as the state-funded DPSUs who are corporatised only in name and wouldn’t survive a day were they to actually compete with L&T, Bharat Forge, and so on, prosper.

But Modi, a couple of months back, publicly disclosed what he meant by atm nirbhar — his “Make in India” policy, he said, involves “Indian toil”. So, for the PM it is enough that Indians employed in these Indian factories of foreign arms companies, being set up here in the hope of getting the exact bonanza they are getting now, will be screwdrivering vintage second rate military hardware the Indian military seems to be enamoured by. So, at least, the country should have no illusion that it is getting anything more than an ersatz arms self-sufficiency. And the contracts these foreign companies masquerading as Indian firms will generate will be but a channel to divert national wealth into defence industries abroad, but now indirectly! But, this policy wrinkle will simplify procurement by bypassing the “jhanjat” of tech transfer. So nothing has changed, will change! This is next generation reform.

It is clear why the Gauba Task Force on “next gen reforms” was constituted — mainly to provide justification for a policy that already had Modi’s stamp — the policy in the PM’s words of “GLOCAL” — GLObal + loCAL! Hurray, Go Glocal!!

There would be NO problem at all if foreign arms producers established their manufacturing units here to avail of lower labour and running costs, produce military goods exclusively and strictly for EXPORT. But now when this policy is implemented, the local private sector defence industry — the sharp edge, will suffer the proverbial double whammy. It will not be able to underbid these foreign-companies in Indian guise in deals from the Indian armed services, and the armed services will indent for major weapons platforms directly in g2g (govt-to-govt) deals with foreign countries because there’s no restriction to their global tendering. That’s how a whole bunch of exorbitantly priced items made their way into the Indian order of battle — Rafale aircraft, Scorpene diesel submarines, T-90 tanks, and similar ridiculous buys whose sell-by date has long since expired.

Welcome to India — the dumping ground for antique Western weaponry, and at humoungous hit to the national exchequer! But India is a rich country with a $21.87 trillion economy (in Purchasing Power Parity terms) per International Monetary Fund data — the third wealthiest in the world (after China and the US), don’t you know!

Anytime the Government of India ends up doing the country’s national security apparatus real harm, there’s always a government commission, committee, or taskforce providing the road map, that it can blame for things going wrong. That dirty work is now being done by the Gauba Taskforce that has striven to kick the legs from underneath the halfway, half-hearted effort mounted so far by the Modi regime to have the country become a supposedly militarily significant power propped up by a hollow indigenous defence industrial might.

Surely, in the Gauba taskforce report the case will be elaborately made about out how and why foreign arms companies permitted entry into the Indian market through such means will ultimately help Indian defence industry “mature” and thrive. There will be lots of technical business jargon, and colourful “pies” and venn diagrams — stuff Modi likes in the presentations made to him. And very likely that part of the report will be authored by someone called Janmeya Sinha, chairman, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), India. BCG is a major consultancy hired by American defence companies when they make their sales pitches to the Pentagon. The Indian station of the BCG now is part of the Indian government’s decision making to ease the entry of US companies into the Indian defence sector. Can there be a more obvious Trojan Horse that we are pulling right into our battlement? Guess whose instructions the Indian branches of Lockeed, General Atomics, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northop Grumman, etc. will follow? Government of India’s/Indian Defence Ministry’s or Washington’s — and that too, Trump’s America???

But this turn in India’s defence economics of putting the foreign fox — BCG — in the Indian hen house — India’s defence procurement decisionmaking process, seems by now quite routine. There’s no ministry or Department of the Government of India that has not recruited one of these Western consultancy firms — Mckinsey & Co., Pricewater-houseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, Ernst & Young Global Limited and KPMG International Limited, to tell them what they already know but want the imprimatur of foreign consultants. In the period 2017-2022, 308 consultancy assignments valued at some Rs 500 crore from various government ministries, departments and organisations, are in the books. (https://indianexpress.com/article/express-exclusive/in-5-years-16-ministries-gave-rs-500-crore-work-to-big-five-consultants-9018061/) This is a new kind of scam the Indian government is now a willing partner in. It begets the kind of situation the country had until recently when the Department of Telecommuications was a Huawei fort inside the BSNL and government.

But this development seems in the mainstream of the Modi government’s recent initiatives that see nothing wrong in signing Free Trade Agreements left and right drawn up by that shortsighted commerce minister, Piyush Goel, and his bunch of babus, with provisions in them to permit British and European companies to bid for all Indian government procurement contracts at the central, state and local levels worth $750 billion annually, which will void the Indian industry. There are other provisions in them that will bar Indian entities from demanding the transfer of source codes as part of sales deals to enable the re-engineering, say, of weapons and other systems for retrofitment on imported hardware and weapons platforms, to fit India’s needs and requirements. Hence, Dassault Avions’ refusal to part with source codes for the Rafale aircraft means that DRDO cannot integrate Indian designed and produced missiles and ordnance into the IAF Rafales. And even for the most minor modifications the IAF will have to go to the French company — an endless revenue stream for Dassult! Apparently Paris had alerted the French defence industry to New Delhi’s agreeing to such provisions in the soon to be formalised FTA with EU (and also with the UK and the US).

Is there to be no end to India’s sucker-hood? Apparently not, because Modi’s atmnirbharta policies are cementing India’s reputation as a classic sucker, the yokel who time and again is taken for a ride! But worse, considering this trend of foreign elements dictating the course of the nation’s security, economic, commercial, and trade policies, and everything else, India can’t be far from full-blown Banana Republic status.

——–

[ACM AP Singh, Chief of the Air Staff, in the Tejas cockpit]

Three months after Operation Sindoor, Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh, just the other day came out with the fantastical claim that the IAF had shot down/shot up/destroyed as many as 12 to 13, even 15, Pakistani military aircraft, ranging from F-16 and JF-17 fighter planes, C-130 transporters, to the Saab Erieye airborne early warning aircraft, besides damaging numerous PAF air bases and radar installations while, ironically, rubbishng Pakistani claims of IAF losses as so much fiction. Why he suddenly woke up this late in the day to voice such patent nonsense, is not clear.

If it was IAF’s belated attempt to challenge the successful Pakistani narrative pushed by Field Marshal Asim Munir that convinced US President Donald Trump — the wrecking ball bringing down the bloated US government, who was inclined any way to give the benefit of doubt — if there was any, to Pakistan about just how the three day “WAR” panned out, it failed! Trump has repeatedly stated publicly that 5 to 7 IAF were lost in that operation.

This is credible information because, as I keep iterating, the Indian government and military are so fully penetrated through human intelligence, electronic intel, and most importantly, and so transparent because of the high resolution 24/7/365 satellite imagery, especially from low earth orbit satellites with sub-10 cm resolution that can spot a football from space. Do you reckon, Washington does not know in excruciating detail just how many aircraft and air bases were shot up in either India or Pakistan? Are aircraft, Brahmos missile, drones and loitering munitions not bigger than a football?

So, even if we believe nothing else the US President says, one can trust what Trump said about IAF losses. If the Air HQ knows better, now is the time for AP Singh to furnish the evidence to contradict Trump’s figures, and to back his own claims of the destruction of 12-15 PAF aircraft — any photo imagery, satellite imagery (even if nowhere reaching the minute resolution levels of the US Kh-11 ‘Big Bird’ optical intel satellite constellation), infrared thermal imagery, sensor reads, signals intercepts, absolutely anything to prove the Air Chief Marshal was right, will do. But, of course, no such proof or evidence will be provided. This only doubles the mystery about why such ludicrous claims were made at this time.

The air chief said he would not help out the Pakistanis by releasing information about Indian losses in Sindoor. Ummm! So he thinks the Americans won’t give it to GHQ, Rawalpindi? And then he wondered if there was even a single photo evidence of a downed IAF aircraft, when actually there is –hasn’t he seen the Rafale debris video from a Bhatinda native — it is there, available on the internet. In the day of mobile telephony it is always better to say nothing, than to open your mouth and get immediately refuted.

AP Singh’s boast of a 300 km deep “kill” within Pakistan and of radar suppression is, however, more believable — but some evidence will be helpful, if only to inspire confidence that when the Indian military brass speak, they are not always serving up dollops of “khyali pulao”! And when thrown a dolly about declining squadron strength, the IAF chief promptly talked of 114 more Rafale, what else! Yea, the same Rafale, whose high-value Spectra avionics and electronic warfare suit laid such a big egg in Sindoor. The same Rafale whose source codes are unavailable, so DRDO is unable to retroactively mesh Indian missiles with its fire control system. So, a fleet of this frightfully expensive and intrinsically flawed aircraft is going to go up against the Chinese Air Force? Good Luck!

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Pakistan now squarely in Israel’s crosshairs

Posted on September 21, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Pakistani Shaheen III MRBM]

Talk of volunteering one’s neck for the Israeli chopping block! Pakistan has gone and done it.

At least two things, known for quite some time now, have come out of the nuclear closet. Firstly, that Saudi Arabia has finally owned up, formalised an arrangement with a nuclear proxy. Having financed Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and missile technology from China in the 1980s, Riyadh is now asserting its seignorial rights to the Pakistani Bomb but cleverly putting Pakistan up as its nuclear front man to face Israeli ire. And secondly, that it is, in fact, what was always claimed for it but mostly by foreign analysts — an “Islamic Bomb”, meaning that it will be at the service of shia and sunni rulers alike, enlarging in a very real sense the role of Jinnah’s “New Medina” as the literal protector of the Prophet’s estate — the old “Medina” spreading over South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Gulf, and the Maghreb.

The statements by an Iranian general and Pakistani ministers support just such a reading. “Pakistan has told us that if Israel uses nuclear missiles, we will also attack it with nuclear weapons.” So declared Mohesen Rezai, Senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general to the Press in Tehran (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/121873943.cms). Pakistan defence minister Khwaja Asif dilated on the topic some more. “We have not named any country whose attack would automatically trigger a retaliatory response”, he stated coyly. “This is an umbrella arrangement offered to one another by both sides…not an aggressive pact”, he clarified. “This agreement will not be hegemonical arrangement…We don’t have any plans to conquer territory or attack anyone” — which must come as a relief to someone — but who, it isn’t at all clear! Further, he described offering its nuclear weapons to other Islamic states as a “fundamental right”, and “sacred duty” to protect the holy Islamic sites in Saudi Arabia. Not to be outspoken by a cabinet colleague, foreign minister Ishaq Dar disclosed, more mysteriously, that “some other countries want to enter into an agreement of this nature.” Abbas then topped of by going overboard. “What we have, our capabilities, will absolutely be available under this pact” to the regime of the Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, before iterating Pakistan’s bonafides as a “a responsible nuclear power” — a status, he claimed, has “never” been challenged. So all the regular N-sabre rattling emanating from west of the Radcliffe Line must be sounds of one hand clapping — do you hear it?!

It is plain that it was Riyadh that put Pakistan upto it — though the grand opportunity to project Pakistan’s “power” in the Islamic world and beyond must have appealed strongly to Asif Munir FM, because he is thus annointed the “Guardian of Mecca and Medina”! That such a treaty has been in the works for a while now is a load of nonsense. A couple of things happened that made Salman want a nuclear weapon at his beck and call: The Israeli air strike on the Hamas leadership in Qatar carried out with Trump’s consent, showed that the “good faith” notions cementing the September 2020 Abrahamic Accords between Israel, UAE and Bahrain that Trump orchestrated his first time around, has come unglued. Indeed, Trump now wants to expand these Accords to include Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon. That won’t succeed. What Riyadh has realised is Israel can’t be stopped, and America is only a bystander once Tel Aviv decides to act. In the event, Salman apparently believes that having a live nuclear option offers him better leverage with the US and in the region than relying on Trump’s word, which counts for nothing — a view his “good friend” Modi no doubt now agrees with! That was the fun part for Munir and Pakistan.

Now comes the hard part – MOSSAD!

Ever since the news got out in the Eighties — I was the vehicle for this bit of news being made public, courtesy my chance meeting in the Kiryat Shimona kibbutz during the June 1982 Lebanon War with the redoubtable Major General Aharon Yaariv, former Head of Military Intelligence — that Israel, in cooperation with India, had almost pulled off the bombing of the Pakistani nuclear weapons labs at Kahuta in early 1982.

General Yaariv, who cut his teeth in the pre-Israel paramilitary, Haganah, in 1948, at the age of 63 was called up from the Reserve for active duty, for the Israeli advance into Lebanon. He relayed to me the details of the planned joint Indo-Israeli air strike operation that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi pulled out of at the last minute, creating no end of frustration in Tel Aviv. Yaariv, who directed the mission to hunt down and execute the killers of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, was exasperated as hell, telling me, as I remember vividly, that India doesn’t seem to know its own interests. Who is to say he was wrong? The Indian goverment is like that only!

Incidentally, the Kahuta op was to be a near repeat of the Israeli strike to take out Saddam Hussein’s nuclear power reactor — Osiraq, near Baghdad in June 1981, an attack ordered by PM, Menachim Begin. It too involved F-16s for ordnance delivery, and F-15s flying escort, and was to be staged out of Jamnagar and Udhampur.

It put the fear of Allah in Pakistan army Generals, because thereafter they began making representations to the Israeli government saying the Pakistani nuclear weapons would under no circumstances be used for other than against India. It was during Parvez Musharraf’s tenure as COAS and then President that Pakistan’s efforts to reassure the Israelis were at their strongest.

Neither Tel Aviv nor Mossad was ever convinced, however. Now with Salman flaunting his finger on the Pakistani nuclear weapons, and Rezaei in Tehran sounding off, guess who has been pushed up and centre into Mossad’s crosshairs?

Munir and cohort don’t quite know, to mix metaphors, the noose they have stuck their necks into. Watch out, and consider the ingenious ways other than the more straightforward tactics, the Israelis will now be mobilising against them. They would be well advised to at least become familiar with the methods that may be used to eliminate the more prominent among them who had a hand in this decision, along with the leading scientists and engineers working for the Strategic Plans Division, Chaklala. Strange things may begin to happen! Field Marshal sahab, order your copy fast of ‘Rise and Kill First’ — Mossad’s operational motto, and the title of a book by Ronen Bergman, on targeted Israeli assassinations! Some of these kill ops were nursed over years.

Israel is not India, Mossad is not RAW, and Benjamin Netanyahu is not Narendra Modi. Expect action.

Good Luck, Pakistan army flag rankers! You’ll need it.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, corruption, Decision-making, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, indian policy -- Israel, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Internal Security, Iran and West Asia, Islamic countries, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, society, South Asia, Terrorism, United States, US., West Asia | Tagged , , , , | 39 Comments

IAF and the French Defence industry

Posted on September 15, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

You can never go wrong under-estimating the Indian Air Force and the Indian government’s strategic foresight. They prove this again and again until now when attaching the adjective ‘strategic’ to any defence-related decision they take, is to stray into oxymoron territory.

Why? Well, consider just the following two cases.

Three weeks back we learnt from defence minister Rajnath Singh that the French jet engine maker, Safran (earlier Snecma) would help India design and develop its own jet engine — no, not by building on the Kaveri 35VS engine that produced 81 kiloNewtons (kN) of thrust in a dry test — which, incidentally, is some 9kN more than the 73kN thrust developed by the engines on the Rafales flying with the IAF currently. And, notwithstanding some Rupees 20 BILLION the country has sunk into the Kaveri project, including setting up the impressive jet engine facility at the GTRE (Gas Turbine Research Establishment), Bengaluru. But rather by forking over $10 BILLION to Safran for passing off the Snecma M88-4 engine with some tinkering, as some new fangled power plant for the Tejas 1A and Mk2.

Except, the M88 is a design product of the 1970s, that is, it is an over 50 year OLD jet engine!

The defence minister very proudly declared that the indigenous twin-engined advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA) would be powered by this engine. Sure its power is going to be increased to 120kN but on the same old design. In other words, by the time the AMCA — a supposedly 5th generation aircraft is airborne realistically no earlier than 2040, the engine it will be outfitted with will already be 70+ years old!!!

Why is soooooooo wrong a decision not obvious to the Defence Ministry and Government of India?!!!

Well, if the old turbofan technology is what the IAF and defence ministry were satisfied with, then why did they turn down the joint proposal by the Indian industrial giants — Larsen & Toubro and Godrej Aerospace to develop the Kaveri Derivative Engine (KDE) with 75 kN thrust for the Tejas 1A and a 98kN version for the Tejas Mk-2, predicated on their accessing all Kaveri source codes, testing data, and design and structural knowledge? The KDE proposes to incorporate, moreover, the afterburner tech developed by Godrej in collaboration with Brahmos Aerospace and a prototype is here, meaning it would be an ALL INDIAN jet engine from start to finish, or isn’t that what the Modi government wants? It will void relying on the American GE 404 and GE414 engines whose flow is susceptible to America’s geopolitical interests of the moment. Consider that between 2021 when the contract was signed for the GE 404 and now, exactly one or two engines have been delivered, along with no end of excuses! Indeed, Godrej AS have already delivered two fully operational 48kN dry thrust turbofan engines for the longrange Ghatak drone (unamanned combat aerial vehicle), displaying its tech mastery plus its promise that it can scale up its capability to manufacture 98kN jet engines to power the Tejas Mk2. In any case, KDE is the way to go for India to become a jet engine maker.

For a government that incessantly crows about atmnirbharta, NOT trusting Indian private sector companies in the military tech sector is incomprehensible, while TRUSTING GE and Safran, whose interest is in stringing India along, not in making it self suffcient. In this regard, there are two reasons why the choice of Safran as partner is mighty suspicious. It had a consultancy-collaboration contract to help get the Kaveri over the hump with the help of Snecma M88 engine technolgies. And this was part of the 2015 offsets deal! (So we know how offsets are treated by foreign companies. In fact, I know of many of these firms including the cost of “seminars”, trips for Indian military personnel, etc as part of the offsets!!) Except that contract collapsed two years later because GTRE accused Snecma of reneging on the transfer of critical technology that was promised and contracted for! So, the latest deal with Safran is a double payment — it pocketed its part of the contract for the 36 Rafale in 2016, and now gets another $10 billion to transfer the technology it was supposed to in 2016 but did not!

This leads to the second factor — France’s utmost reluctance to part with technology. French defence companies, recently publicly upbraided the German submarine Thyssen Krupp Marine company for offering the source codes for its HDW 214 submarine for the Indian navy’s Project 75i — another boondoggle (we will get to it another time)! They were upset that Thyssen would set a precedent, and they too’d be compelled to do the same thing in the future. But here the Indian government came to the rescue of French, German, and every other Western supplier. The Free Trade Agreement the Piyush Goel-led commerce ministry negotiated with the UK and is negotiating with the EU and the US, permits Western supplier firms to deny transfer of source codes for their wares!

To get back to the M88. It is OLD tech. The latest advances in jet engine design and technology — the Variable Cycle Engine (VCE) that will soon be equipping modern combat aircraft is in its final stages of development in many leading countries. The VCE is distinguished by the fact that its turbofans rotate at different speeds enabling the optimising of fuel efficiency and thrust in subsonic, transonic and supersonic flight modes. The M88 and other engines of that generation and their variants had to be designed to optimise either thrust or fuel efficiency, they could not have both. With VCE you do.

Two foreign companies were in the running for the engine deal — Rolls Royce of the UK, and Safran. The curious thing is that Rolls Royce, it is said, promised the VCE but over a longer time span because it is still under development. France-Safran has no such underway project, and is into extending the life of the basic M88 design as much as possible, and which design improvements now will be subsidised by the Indian taxpayer with the $10 billion payout! Safran originally offered only 50% tech transfer but matched Rolls Royce after the latter offered 100% tech transfer with source codes, et al. On the source codes, despite Indian government pressure, Dassault did not relent on transferring Rafale source codes. Hence integrating Indian missiles and other armaments on the Rafale aircraft, is impossible. Dassault is angling for separate contracts to integrate specific Indian weapons! There go more billions of dollars into Dassault account! Why because no one in the Indian defence ministry had the wit to include transfer of source codes in the original contract.

Sure, Britain is an American hanger-on trying to humour Trump by doing things like having King Charles entertain him soon at the Windsor Castle to massage his ego just so he reduces the tariffs on British exports! And yes the bad experience, for instance, with the British Sea King anti-submarine warfare helicopters with the Indian Navy may have influenced the decision to go with Safran. Sea Kings were instantly grounded when the US imposed sanctions on India for the 1998 nuclear tests, because the rotary aircraft had American Pratt & Whitney engines. But the record shows that France is no more trustworthy.

Recall that in the 1982 Falklands War, the Argentine Navy operated the Super Etendard armed with the anti-ship AS 39 Exocet cruise missile. After the Argentines sank the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sheffield (on May 4) as also several landing ships not long after the establishment of the British naval blackade on April 30, London asked Paris for the performance parameters and other design details of the Exocet, which the French promptly handed over. It helped the British to neutralise the Exocet — there were no further sinkings of RN ships. The point is there is no guarantee of what France may do by way of informing adversary nations about their hardware in Indian employ. Not, of course, that the Indian military has any secrets — just about every weapon system used by the armed services has a Western or Russian pedigree. And weapons platforms wholly of Indian design, like the Tejas light combat aircraft, are actively disfavoured by the services. And lest there be any misunderstanding, the Tejas LCA was imposed on the IAF by the Modi government.

But having done the right thing by the Tejas, the government went ahead and torpedoed the plane’s chances by handing the full production contract over to the defence public sector unit HAL — supposedly a “navratan”! This wretched DPSU like its kindred Mazgaon Dockyard, Avadi Heavy Vehicles, etc., guzzles money and survives only because the Department of Defence Production in the Defence Ministry thinks it is its remit to keep these DPSUs afloat. In all the years since their inception thay have not done anything remotely innovative by way of technology. Unless you count screwdrivering weapons platforms from knocked down kits innovation!

The more obvious solution would have been to have DRDO transfer the Tejas source codes, etc to L&T and Godrej Aerospace for them to set up additional Tejas production lines of their own, as I have been advocating in these posts, thereby augmenting the HAL production rate of 16 aircraft per year. With the second HAL assembly line that rate would go up to 32 aircraft annually. But the IAF requirement already contracted for is 180 Tejas 1A and Mk2 aircraft. At a 32 aircraft production clip, it will take HAL 6 some years — and that is a theoretical minimum. In reality, HAL delivered just TWO this past year because, well, of GE’s delay in sending the F404 engines! Precisely the reason why the Defence ministry should still choose the indigenous KDE option.

Additional L&T and Godrej production lines for Tejas and for the 73kN KDE power plant would have made the Tejas enterprise entirely independent of foreign engines and potentially a huge revenue generator if these private firms were also tasked,simultaneously, to sell Tejas abroad, find an international market for it. And this is the option NOT selected by the Defence Ministry.

The Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh at a media event last week explained why the IAF and the other two services bank on imported hardware. “There is always a tradeoff between what you can buy of the shelf and what you develop over time in terms of what the forces need immediately. We have trid to provide them”, he said, ” the flexibility through the emergency procuremenrt process….There is a tradeoff in the short term, but in the long run, the intent is to go fully indigenous in all of these capabilities.”

This immediate need-indigenous capability tradeoff as I pointed out in my 2015 book Why India is not a great power (yet), is not convincing, and is actually the reason why India remains an arms dependency and will continue to do so into the future. This is because a small number of Rafale aircraft, say, bought to meet urgent needs becomes the wedge in the door for the IAF to get more of the same foreign aircraft at the expense of the indigenous, also 4.5 generation Tejas aircraft. The Tejas programme was put through the meat grinder to realise a perfect aircraft without kinks, in the hope that it would simply die! The funding for the imports as a consequence is assured, not so for the home grown item which is made to jump through unending hoops. Does anybody care to remember that the Tejas was found unacceptable by the IAF because weapons had not been integrated into it, delaying its induction by 4-5 years. BUT, the IAF was happy to fly the Mirage 2000 without any weapons for several years before they were outfiited with them! Because IAF had not contracted for the weapons! Or, did but did not get them with the platforms as contracted.

And, does anybody ask about the deficiences of the imported plane? So, how did Rafale fare in Sindoor, pray? The Spectra electronic warfare suite at the heart of this supposedly advanced high-tech combat aircraft and constituting — by rule of thumb — some 20% of the price of the plane, proved a DUD. Spectra is described by Wikipedia as a system incorporating “radar warning, laser warning, and missile appoach warning for threat detection plus a phased array radar jammer and a decoy dispenser for threat countering”. OK. So, what happened? None of these do-dahs worked! Its radars and sensors could not pick up the Pakistani Saab 2000 Eriye Airborne Warning and Control System surveilling the Indian skies and specifically tracking the Rafale once it came into its view as target of interest. And the Spectra had even less clue about the Pakistan Air Force JC-10 loitering in passive mode before closing in for weapon release, leave alone about the PL15E air-to-air missile it fired, resulting in the targeted Rafale getting downed in Aklia village outside Bhatinda. And, the country is supposed to pay tens of billions of Euros for 114 more such lemons?!!!

In the IAF and the Indian Navy brass, the French defence industry has found a bunch of connivers who are making a perennial sucker out of India. (On the navy and 75i, another time.) Then again, with Mirage-Rafale-Scorpene buys requiring repeated trips to Paris and its allurements catered for as part of the offsets, no one will object to buying these pieces of hardware, especially as the Indian government is complicit. It behaves as if it has all the money in the world to waste, except when it comes letting the Indian private sector in, when every paisa gets counted. The fear among many military personnel and defence civilians is that this easy channel of corruption — Paris trips being only the proverbial tip of the iceberg, would be eliminated.

India paid some Rs 59,000 crores for 36 Rafales, or Rs 1,640 cr per aircraft in 2015, and Rs 62,000 crores for 26 Rafale Marine, or Rs 2,385 cr for each aircraft to adorn an Indian deck, for a total of Rupees one lakh twenty-one thousand crores, so far for 62 aircraft. Notice the inverse relationship between the cost of aircraft and their price. How much will the 114 more Rafales cost? Who knows! Dassault can quote any damned price they want, and the supplicant Indian government will pay it, with dozens of guaranteed trips to, oh yes, Paris by the Price Negotiation Committee! Another among the routine Third World country scams that go unnoticed! That’s the price the country pays for NOT DESIGNING and making its own weapons systems, even when it is perfectly capable of doing so, if only Modi and Rajnath Singh looked beyond the DPSUs.

The fact, specifically, is that the IAF is a foreign aircraft junkie and has been since its birth, doing whatever it can to get its next fix of non-performing junk of flying metal. The reason this is allowed is that the Defence Ministry and PMO act like indulgent parents of a dope addict — who, they think, can do no wrong. Except in real life, the defence ministry-PMO are bereft of domain expertise and very nearly oblivious to developments in warfare generally, and air warfare in particular, and choose to leave it to the “professionals” to do right by the country. But all the Vayu Bhavan brass seem to do is make self-serving decisions.

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Modi’s effusive response to Trump sets India up for more humiliation

Posted on September 8, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Hello, did you miss me?]

Photographs often reveal the subsurface reality as nothing else does. Just call up the trove of Modi-Trump pics on the net and what you see in most of them is Modi fawning over Trump, looking up endearingly at him, just too eager to please. The one with a bemused Melania (look at her eye, above) looking on as Modi embraces the US President ardently even as the latter reciprocates stiffly, is comical.

It suggests just how much Modi wants Trump to like him, and wants him to muster the intimacy the PM himself feels for the American — why? is not clear. It also suggests that the Indian leader is stuck in time, in the heyday of the “Howdy, Modi!” phase of their personal relations, but that Trump has moved on. As has US policy from centering on India to pivoting on the extended region. It is the reason why the 38-year old, Russian-speaking Sergio Gor, in-charge of personnel at the White House is the ambassador-designate not just to India but to the entire region, including presumably Pakistan and other South Asian states and Central Asia. Gor’s nomination can be a good thing for India, because the US will, per strategic logic, need an anchor for its regional policy and it cannot be any other country than India. This fact can be used by New Delhi to shape Gor’s mindset, Trump’s attitude, and the US policy. The more likely thing to happen is Gor tending the Kurilla way, and India being in the outhouse.

General Michael Kurilla is the recently retired chief of the US Central Command, who described Pakistan as a “phenomenal partner” in fighting terrorism, and couldn’t quite contain himself when praising the Pakistan army and its chief! Gor can then be expected to look upon Pakistan as the less difficult, more pliable, client state led by Field Marshal Asim Munir who, reportedly, has parked his wife and children in America where they have taken up US citizenship. With the Trump Family’s crypto and mining businesses dictating US policy, and Munir promising implicitly to add hugely to the US President’s personal wealth while, no doubt also enhancing his own family’s fortunes, this is the direction the US will be heading in.

Being on the outs with America is, in any case, what India should prudently prepare for. Instead, the Modi regime seems inclined to cling to the hope that treating Trump like some old style oriental potentate would prompt him to shower favours on India. On Friday (Sept 5), Trump said he’ll “always be friends with Modi”. When queried if he was ready to reset relations, he replied with a non-sequiter — “India and the United States have a special relationship”, adding that “There’s nothing to worry about. We just have moments on occasion.” And then he kvetched again about India buying oil from Russia and about his 50% tariffs to punish the country. The Indian prime minister reacted instantly and in an embarrasingly effusive manner: “Deeply appreciate and fully reciprocate President Trump’s sentiments and positive assessment of our ties. India and the US have a very positive and forward looking Comprehensive and Global Strategic Partnership”. This, as a Sunday newspaper felt constrained to point out, was only a day after Trump had posted on social media that the US had “lost” India to “deepest, darkest” China! And his prime attack dog, the commerce minister Edward Lutnick, had confidently predicted India would “say sorry” and return to finalise a free trade agreement! There was no reminding Trump by Modi in his response that the Indian government acts and will do so always on the basis of the country’s national interest, not on someone else’s say-so, that India is energy deficient and will continue to buy oil and gas from the cheapest source, and that Russia is an old friend and will remain so. This Modi and his regime did not do and, therefore, would Trump be wrong in assuming he can kick Modi and his government around every time he initiates these “moments”, and can compel them to do his bidding without disrupting or harming Indo-US ties?

Former Indian ambassadors to the US contacted by the media for their reactions uniformly said reponding “politely” to Trump was the right thing to do. No one said that making up with America is fine, but Washington ought to be put on notice if not by Modi than by Jaishankar, that India is not a Munir-ruled Pakistan to be trifled with. Nor did any amongst them criticise the external affairs minister for instead stressing the warmth in Modi’s personal relations with Trump! It appears there are no costs, no consequences for Trump treating India with disdain and its leader with contempt. National self-respect must mean something. If it doesn’t it must say something about us, and how much we lack by way of self-esteem.

Recall that Zhouenlai’s proffered hand was ignored by John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, in the 1950s. The Chinese state never forgot that insult and no Chinese leader shook hands with Western leaders again until Nixon on his breakthrough trip in 1972. Aware of this incident and how it had rankled the Chinese Communist brass, Nixon walked the length of the red carpet at the airport with outstretched hands, and it was only after Nixon stood before him for a few seconds still with his hand out did the great Mandarin deign to shake it. That’s how nations win respect, and not when leaders snivel around for attention. China is a nation with a long memory. India is without one no matter how much hurt and humiliation is heaped on it. This is a historical fact.

Which way America tilts wouldn’t really matter all that much if Indians and their government had a sense of themselves and of the country’s geostrategic and economic importance in the world, and did not approach the US, or anyone else, as a supplicant. The Italian film maker, Pier Paolo Passolini, visiting in the 1950s called India “a nation of beggars”. The indigent still clog our cities, and Indian politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats have their metaphorical hand out. So, what has changed?

There may, however, be a general awakening, including wthin the government and the community of retired babus and the like, specifically to the danger Trump and the US pose India, Reflecting the unease. Arvind Virmani, a former chief economic adviser wrote on social media “I am …gradually coming around to the view, that a large fraction of US elites prefer an India which is weak & subservient to the US and/or China over a strong India. The puzzle is why?”

WHY? Because as I have been at pains to emphasise over the last 35-odd years, that the US, like all big powers, is unscrupulous in pursuing its interests, but it is more venomous than others. India meanwhile has been busy trying to act the vishwa this, vishwa that, and to be a “responsible state”, and has ended up mostly hurting itself. Soft power, the government thinks, is all that India need have. What hard power and military muscle the country prides itself on couldn’t withstand the slightest pressure from Trump during Sindoor. The Modi regime seemed as eager as the Munir Gang on the other side to end that farce of a “war”. There are no points awarded, no gains registered, in international relations for restraint. And no national interest is served by restraint. It is always the narrowly defined national interest that has to be realised at all cost and by any means, and in extremis. There’s just too much of the supposedly elevated thinking the Indian government seems afflicted by. It has time and again been conned into believing that what’s good for America/the West is good for India, into supporting idiotic causes like nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, into asserting that shared democratic values, etc. matter. They don’t.

Have long maintained that because India and the Indian government have shown they are completely bereft of any strategic sense, the country’s interests would be better served if MEA and Defence Ministry merely aped Beijing and did what the Chinese do, and how they do it. The trouble is we can’t even do that. China proliferated nuclear missiles to Pakistan without a second thought. But merely mentioning a strictly reciprocal gesture of transferring nuclear missiles to states on China’s border to equalise the strategic situation, has our netas and babus breaking into cold sweat. Doing anything that Washington or Beijing frowns upon is likewise No Go. It seems there is nothing that India does as well as playing the victim. We also refuse to learn lessons from our own experiences, leave alone from others’.

What should the Indian government’s response have been to Trump’s attempt to reconnect?

The reaction ought to have been standoffish, with only the MEA spokesman saying something to the effect that “The Indian government notes President Trump’s interest in repairing relations with India, but trust cannot be easily restored. The US government could make a start by unconditionally removing the unfair and unjustified tariffs imposed on Indian exports.” That’s it. Nothing more! It would have set Trump thinking that India is harder to deal with than he thought. With Modi nor Jaishankar mentioning tariffs, the White House is free to believe the Indian government is fine with it!

It could put some teeth into this stance moreover by, for instance, holding all major capital acquisition/military procurement deals on hold. And doing the same to the free trade agreement neotiations. And to ensure India did not again step into any trap set by Trump’s whimsy-as-US-policy, the government should actively facilitate Indian exporters’ finding alternate markets for their goods, and to conspicuously ramp up economic and other relations with Russia, EU, China, and BRICS, and military cooperation with Australia and Japan — US allies that have about had it with Trump’s tariffs and unpredictable policies, and displayed it with more anger than New Delhi has shown. Especially now that the Pentagon has made public its intention to concentrate US resources on securing the homeland and the Western hemisphere leaving Asia, presumably, to China to lord over. This is G2 in the making I have been warning about. It is precisely the incentive needed for Asian states to cooperate, collaborate and mobilise to strategically tie down China — an evolving milieu New Delhi appears unmindful of. And for India to join Israel and Japan to develop advanced technology, freed from the oppressive American pressure and concerns.

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Geopolitics-geostrategics post-Sindoor, after Trump-tariff rift

Posted on September 7, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

This CHAKRA podcast “Why Trump Turned on India & Why It Backfired: The Sandeep Unnithan Show” was recorded on Aug 29, 2025 with Sandeep Unnithan.

It was an hour long recording trimmed to fit a half-hour slot!

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Modi showed spunk and spine, now time to bolster India’s leverage and really reform

Posted on September 1, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Making a point — Modi with Putin & Xi in Tianjin]

Narendra Modi and Donald Trump are hewn from the same narcissistic-autocratic Alpha leader cloth. And their clash may be pictured as between two tough mountain goats in a hard head-butting bout, neither backing down, and each trying to push the other over the cliff.

Trump was being Trump when, his hopes of the Nobel Peace Prize dashed by Modi’s refusal to support the nonsense about the US President’s role in ending Op Sindoor, he raked the Indian PM over the coals. He obviously expected that imposing 50% tariffs on India would lead to a chastised Modi folding, a’la Zelensky, and suing for peace. And, having shown up the Indian leader as his vassal, he’d then respond by magnanimously announcing a reduction of tariffs to the 25% level to Modi’s great relief! That didn’t work. Next, he had Peter Navarro, his Trade representative whom fellow economists call “stupid” and worse, try and exert pressure on New Delhi by ramping up the rhetoric about Ukraine being “Modi’s war” and India a “laundromat” for Russia’s ill-gotten monies. That didn’t work either, leaving the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who had berated India for buying Russian oil, to tone down the invective by telling Fox News that “at the end of the day we will come together.” Nope, that isn’t happening!

Instead, the next thing that actually happened was India walked out of the Free Trade Agreement negotiations (as Navarro tells it), and Modi betook himself to Tianjin for the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement summit to talk things over with Putin and Xi Jinping. But not before first flying into Tokyo, there to sign a ramped up defence cooperation agreement with Japan, and publicly to support Japanese claims on the Senkaku Islands in the East Sea disputed with China — an “in your face” move that must have rocked Xi and his team back on their heels. Because they surely expected a cowed down Modi to be more malleable. So, for the first time in his tenure as prime minister — and for the first time, in fact, since whenever, that an Indian leader showed spunk and spine. That he did so before entering the lair of the dragon, is particulary commendable.

One so wishes Trump had mistreated Modi in this manner in his first term, just so the country was spared the ensuing spectacle of the leader of a proud country acting like a servile and obsequious nobody in the court of Trump. Still, now with Modi humiliated he reacted as he should have done all along — standing his ground, and telling Trump and Xi Jinping where to get off!

The most interesting thing to happen in Tianjin, incidentally, was outside the conference hall. Modi and Putin, it is said, spent a whole hour together inside the latter’s posh armoured vehicle, before reaching the summit site. Whatever they talked about, they seemed at the end of their closed interaction inside Putin’s car — no doubt swept clean of Chinese listening devices, and not anywhere outside where their conversation may have been picked up — to have a spring in their step as they walked in seperately to be greeted by Xi. Bet, it wasn’t just niceties they exchanged!

It is good to see the Indian PM with a chip on his shoulder for being treated shabbily, and publicly at that, by the US President. I had said in my 2018 book ‘Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition’ that Modi’s “creeper vine foreign policy” of wrapping itself around America, would NOT turn out well for India. It turned out even less well for Modi, personally, especially when he had invested so much political capital in building Trump up as his “good friend” and India’s relationship with America, as special — an enterprise hurrahed along by retired diplomats, generals, JNU academics, and lay media commentators. All these people, not surprisingly, beseeched Modi in op-eds in the wake of his breakup with Trump, to grin and bear the personal hurt, and for India to absorb the tariff pain, and generally to behave like a nation of Gungadins!

Shame! Shame!

What is galling is why the government never got its story right, off the gate, on the Russian oil at the centre of this brouhaha. At the Bratislava Forum early in the year, foreign minister S Jaishankar said that India was buying oil from Russia at discounted rates at Washington’s behest. More recently, petroleum minister Hardip Puri told BBC that India’s decision to buy Russian energy was for purely commercial reasons — it was available cheap. So, which is it, because it matters? Apparently, Jaishankar was being more candid. But he also revealed that New Delhi was happy doing first Biden’s and later Trump’s bidding, and buying oil just because at that time the international oil price stability served the interests of the US and European states who needed diesel and other refined oil products that they previously secured from Russia directly. In fact, so convoluted is the energy politics that the diesel produced by the Reliance refinery in Jamnagar from processed Russian crude actually makes up some 15% of the Ukrainian requirement of diesel! So, would India not be hurting Kyiv’s war effort by stopping Russian oil purchases?

To return to Tianjin, as if to cement the fracture in relations with the US, Modi in his formal speech at the summit, said: “India and Russia have a special and privileged partnership. In the most difficult and testing times, India and Russia have always stood by each other,” and added that India “eagerly” awaits Putin’s visit later in the year. With respect to China, Modi was straightforward. “Our cooperation is linked to the interests of 2.8 billion people of our two countries”, he asserted. “This will also pave the way for the welfare of all humanity. We are committed to advancing our relations based on mutual trust, respect, and sensitivity.” Not to be outdone in sentiment, Xi referred to the world “undergoing rapid transformations and international instability. China and India are the two major Eastern powers and the most populous countries in the world…We uphold”, he declared, “strong commitment: advancing the unity and revival of developing countries and promoting human progress are important strategies. As good friends and partners who support each other, integrating and uniting should be the right path for China and India.”

Under assault from Trump, it indicates a certain solidifying of the RIC (Russia-India-China) grouping, which effect will spill over in the economic realm into a strengthened BRICS, with Brazil, like India, smashed with 50% tariffs. Brazil has, remained defiant, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ensuring that his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, charged with treason, whom Trump tried to save by threatening tariffs, will be tried in court. Indeed, Lula is fortifying the military guard around Bolsonaro lest he try and escape, perhaps, with American (CIA) help.

What Trump has unwittingly achieved is solidarity of all the major non-NATO countries that together will be too much for a receding power like America or even the US+NATO to handle.

What Modi has to now ensure is that India does not lose the leverage it has gained with the US and China. He will have to resist the pleadings from the corporate world and the internal leanings of the MEA under Jaishankar, to reach an understanding with Trump. The US President finds himself up a creek and there’s no reason to rescue him by having the Indian governement climb down from its principled position.

There’s the deal for 113 GE 414 jet engines, for starters. Modi can drive a hard bargain by demanding that GE hand over source codes to India — a demand that should be made with the French firm, Dassault Avions, as well for the source codes for the ridiculously expensive 4.5 generation Rafale and Rafale-Marine aircraft, on the pain of rescinding the deals for them. It is the French, we must remember, who not too long ago admonished Thyssen-Krupp for promising to furnish India with the source codes for the HDW 214 diesel submarine with Air Independent Propulsion for the Indian navy’s Project 75i. (More on these deals, hopefully, in a future post.)

With regard to the US and China, moreover, India has to conduct its foreign policy nonlinearly — something China and America have always done expertly with India. Thus, because US healthcare depends on generic drugs produced cheaply by Indian pharma companies, their import is exempt from Trump’s tariffs. Jewelry, leather goods, etc are not exactly great things for India to export and the fact that they are tariffed, well, what the heck they may be routed into the US market via third countries. The consumer goods, let Indian manufacturers find alternate markets in Africa and Latin America for them by producing them more cheaply than China does. Hey, that’s the marketplace logic. Swim or sink! The Modi government has also instantly to diplomatically stop opening H1B type visa doors for would be Indian techie immigrants to the US, West European states, and Australia that they prefer to go to. There are cultural resistance movements in all these countries against Indians in their midst. It reflects on the country that so many want to escape it.

RIC and BRICS are fine by way of balancing the US economically and politically. But China too has to be balanced, but militarily and here BRIS (Brazil-Russia-India-South Africa) and Modified or Mod Quad (India-Japan-Australia and the US replaced by a group of Southeast Asian countries) should be diligently pursued, and loose and informal securitised dyads and triads of, say, India-Japan-Australia, India-Japan-South Korea, India-Indonesia-Philippines, India-Vietnam-Philippines, etc — as I argue in my next book that I am currently finishing, will provide precisely the overlapping military protection for regional and sub-regional countries without the impedimenta of formal alliances, etc.

Shouldn’t Modi, at least now, after seeing India getting kicked with tariffs, and the closing of H1B visa channel and restrictions on entry of Indian students — because both he and Jaishankar have been going round over the years preaching “labour mobility” to advanced countries who are not listening anymore, do what he has long promised but not delivered — “Reform, Perform, Transform”? Or, is it forever to remain just a slogan?

With digitisation successfully implemented, has the Prime Minister ever wondered why the government portals dealing especially with licenses are always not working? Because this is how the babus make money? And why are the babus still permitted discretionary power — a means of generating bribes? And why are there so many licenses to open and conduct business, any way? And why are so many paper documents needed in the digital age for bureaucratic oversight? Where, in fact, is the “ease of doing business” that the government keeps boasting about?

And what happened, PMji, to getting the government out of the business of business? Why not, in this respect, start by privatising the defence public sector units? You corporatised them, good. Now let them go to the market for capitalisation, sell shares, as L&T, Mahindra Godrej Aerospace, et al, do, and have them compete for military contracts instead of, as happens now, the Department of Defence Production in the Defence Ministry, in sweet heart manner, channeling contracts to the hopeless and resources- wasting HAL, Mazgaon Dockyard, etc.

Please, Modiji, pay attention to these aspects of administration. Artificial Intelligence can remove the need for most of these armies of peons, clerks, section officers clogging up the system. Let AI take over these roles, allowing you to drastically prune the central government — which would lead, in its train, to the shrinking of state and local governments.

But efficient and effective AI requires that the mountains of laws, rules, regulations, to simply be discarded whole — these are the remnants of the British Raj. Time they were given the heave ho. And with the government bringing in Constitutional Amendments left and right, why not do the country and its people the ultimate service of removing Article 311 in the Constitution that provides lifetime security of employment to government employees, chaprassi on up, as a means of sprucing up the government?When public servants know that their continued employment depends on their effectiveness and efficiency in office, they will perform and, voila!, the Indian society will be transformed!! No Indian Prime Minister then would have to go on bended knees to foreign leaders to offtake employable youth to avoid an explosive social powder keg from developing at home.

These reforms and such steps are what will push India into the great power category by 2047. Looking to the US, China or anyone else for help and assistance which, in any case, will be unavailable, is not going to get India there.

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Hard knocks for Modi

Posted on August 9, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi and Trump in Feb 2025]

People ask if I feel vindicated with Trump and the US turning on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India, and heaping insult on humiliation with a 50% tariff that’s the highest imposed on any country. There’s something to be said after all about the satisfaction with saying “I told you so!” But I have been saying so for decades, and satisfaction wears off quickly to be replaced by frustration at the amateurs in Delhi trying to play in the realpolitik major league and being nowhere up to scratch.

The desperate diplomatic lunges by NSA Ajit Doval towards Moscow is to be followed soon by the country’s leading pusher of good relations with America at any cost — even India’s sovereignty — S Jaishankar, our esteemed external affairs minister (EAM).

(Incidentally, IFS officers in MEA, I am told, are surprised and appalled by the extent to which Jaishankar is pushing the “give in to Trump”, “buy peace with Trump” lines, and by how much he is willing to compromise the national interest.)

Meanwhile, Xi Jinping sits pretty in Zhongnanhai watching, as is every Asian government and regime, India getting kicked around by Trump with a mewling response from New Delhi. This even as China is the biggest importer/buyer of Russian oil and gas via direct pipelines to the energy sources in Siberia and suffers no proportionate tariffs because, well, Beijing can deny exports to the US of rare earths magnets critical to many US weapons systems. So we have, as someone noted, the deliciously surreal scenario of a country withholding supply of something to another country needing it to fight the supplier state! But Xi is a cool hand at this game. And must be licking his chops awaiting Modi’s state visit — the first in 7 years when he too can turn the tourniquet, seek a modus vivendi on the LAC on Chinese terms, which, in any case, the PLA has snatched on the ground.

Or, for that matter, what do you think Putin’s treatment of Jaishankar would be when he visits Moscow to once again seek support now that Trumpian America has kicked India to the curb? And why he’d be met with a mix of barely concealed contempt, condescension and not a little schadenfreude, even as Putin too would happily turn the screw, but more silkily. Russian oil might become dearer for a start!

Modi’s response to Trump’s relentless attacks is to say he is prepared to “pay a heavy price. [And] India is prepared to pay a heavy price.” Brave words and fine, but a predictable and nearly useless response other than as a warning to the Indian people to tighten their collective belt for the leaner times ahead. Because, all it will do is to motivate Trump and to an equal degree Xi, and even Putin/Peskov/Lavrov in Moscow to see just how far the US can push India around, or to put it differently, what Modi’s breaking point is, if there’s a breaking point.

But the question is how did Modi get India into this position? Obviously because, advised and prodded by Jaishankar, he gave every indication that he’d walk the extra mile in placating and pacifying Trump, and preparing to move all the country’s eggs into America’s basket, leaving the country overly vulnerable. Except Trump understands how he’s relatively placed with the other leaders. With Putin and Xi, he knows he can’t do other than play it straight. Modi, he realises is a clinger, with a policy of clinging to any passing coattail, and can be dealt with abruptly and with a dismissive attitude.

Modi is not a Luiz Lula da Silva of Brazil nor a Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, a Berkeley PhD in energy management and hence clearly an intellectual overmatch for Trump. Lula shot down Trump with his gringo-jibe, and Sheinbaum has been, as the online political magazine, Politico, described her, “icy cool”, refusing to rise to his bait, but taking actions beneficial to both countries. Like hammering the drug cartels. Trump therefore finds nobody to bully except Modi. And because he finds Modi cowed, the Indian PM can expect yet more bullying, and still more after that next bout, until Modi stands up and and says no more!

But, where and who can Modi turn to now — Kremlin? Dusting off India’s attribute as a geostrategic leverage against both the US and China is the best bet. But, perhaps, on stiffer terms. And Modi will take himself to Beijing and deal with Xi from a much weaker position. He may not get kicked in the face as he bends his knee, as he was by Trump, but he won’t come away with consideration either.

Things however have got to such a pass, it has now become personal. Here Modi is up a creek. He has always acted the inferior with Trump — and that’s the way the latter likes it. The US President has seen all Europe and the Asian Far East Asian allies accept his economic diktats. And everybody’s on board to humour his conceit as a peacemaker and win the Nobel Peace Prize to match the one awarded to President Barack Obama in 2009 for doing nothing more strenuous by way of peacemaking than delivering a speech in Prague. Quite literally! So why not double down — and this is a piece of advice to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee — on the joke they authored: Hand the damn thing to Trump keen on besting Obama at every thing, and let’s be done with it!

Azerbaijan and Armenia appreciate the joke only too well as their leaders have accepted Trump’s invitation to sign a peace accord in the White House to buttress its present occupant’s supposed peacemaking reputation! The chances are that Trump does not know where either of these countries is, or what peace it is which he has allegedly mediated and over what (Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian Christian enclave that’s been virtually ethnically cleansed of Armenians in the wake of the war between them in 2020). But these are details, and unimportant! It is the peacemaker role he was robbed off by the Indian government refuting his involvement in Op Sindoor which, in Trump’s imagination, he had ratcheted all the way up to a near nuclear exchange!! One can see how compelling that narrative might have been to the Nobel Committee in Stockholm had it an iota of truth in it, which the Indian government, spoiling it for Trump, said there wasn’t. General Asim Munir, quick to spot an opportunity to massage Trump’s ego, had Islamabad write an official note thanking the US President for his fictional “peace-making” intervention, and won Trump’s confidence. As easy as that! And then followed Trump’s venomous actions against India, ensuring some four decades of painstaking diplomacy, of building up India-US relations, of getting India over the hump of its deep down and well merited distrust of America, went up in smoke.

The upside is Modi may be cured of his unrequited love for Trump and America and, if the PM has any sense, he may care to put Jaishankar out to pasture as well, in the main because he is associated principally with fleshing out the US tilt in Indian policy that has proven to be such a monstrous disaster. Because, as long as he is still pulling the strings in the MEA, there will be no movement toward equilibrating the Indian foreign policy between Asia-minus China, Russia, EU and the US with BRICS, the security-related BRIS (BRICS minus China) to militarily balance China without America that I proposed (in my 2018 book — Staggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition), and with the same objective in mind, a Modified Quadrilateral (India, Japan and Australia) with the US in this group replaced by a bunch of Southeast Asian nations — so that a loose overarching security architecture does not have to depend on an unreliable and untrustworthy America. (An analog of this seems to be what President Emanuel Macron of France has in mind for an exclusively European defence system.)

Alternative security arrangements, more organic to Asia, need to be conceived and considered by the Indian government and the military, because to continue to bank on any external power for strategic security against China is to set India up for more surprise and humiliation in the future of the kind it is suffering at Trump’s and America’s hands.

Ultimately, it is a matter of national self-respect and goes beyond Modi or any other Indian leader of the day. Modi may be willing to stomach Trump’s obloquy; but the nation cannot bear to be so deliberately dishonoured.

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Modi talks national interest protection, but India surrenders digital sovereignty in FTAs and ignores trade imbalance favoring America — what is happening??

Posted on August 4, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi and UK prime minister Kier Starmer]

When Sir Thomas Roe presented himself in the Mughal Emperor Jehangir’s court at Agra in 1614 as the ambassador of Elizabeth I of England, he did so on the condition he would not observe the rituals of paying obeisance — all the bowing and scraping, to the Badshah. But Roe was an effective enough salesman to have his social transgressions tolerated, because in next to no time he came away with a royal firman permitting the English a trading post in Surat. Apparently, Jehangir didn’t think much about allowing the firangis an economic toehold on the subcontinent. Had he foreseen that small measly presence being parlayed by Britain in time and by strategem into the Raj – the crown jewel of its worldwide empire and the Pax Britannica that followed, he might have had second thoughts. But early 17th century was not exactly Marshall McLuhan’s global village, and inconceivably long distances and a remote kingdom “saat samandar paar” seeking to buy spices, etc. would have been seen as affirming the status of the “Great Moghul”. So Jehangir may be excused his inflated sense of self-importance, and ignorance of geostrategics.

But, what is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s excuse for gifting India’s sovereignty to Britain 411 years — read that again, four hundred and eleven years — later, this time in the digital realm and, once again, by way —what else— of a trading arrangement? Now it is not spices but sovereignty over source codes and the ever-growing mountains of accumulated and aggregated uniquely Indian government data that foreign countries covet, and the sovereignty over which the Indian government has agreed to surrender to Britain as part of the Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement (CETA). So what Modi has sacrificed, in effect, is the country’s digital security and sovereignty.

Seeing the wide, self-satisfied, smile of commerce minister Piyush Goel as he signed CETA even as his British opposite number smirked (or did I imagine that?) like the Cheshire cat in Alice’s Wonderland, whose smile remained even as the feline disappeared, it is plain that neither Goel nor the so-called trade “experts” in his ministry have even a smidgeon of understanding of what “digital sovereignty” is, or comprehend the enormity of what they have so breezily given away. But giveaways, as I have time and again mentioned in my books and other writings, are an Indian government standard. So, what’s new? Goel is a minion of little importance, but he took his tasking orders from the PM. So it is Modi who has to answer for imperiling and compromising the nation’s digital future.

Ironically, around the time Goel was claiming a “gold standard” for CETA and asserting that no sensitive sector was compromised — by which he just meant agriculture, GM foods, Modi in his Varanasi constituency was waxing eloquent about swadeshi and dilating on the global economy, which he said, faced “multiple uncertainties and an atmosphere of instability. In such a scenario”, he declared, “countries across the world are focusing on their own interests”, before exhorting everyone to “remain vigilant about our economic interests.”

Either, Goel has not got the message, or he is doing his master’s bidding. If it is the latter then it suggests that neither Modi, nor anyone else in the vast Government of India, quite has the hang of the digital world, and how the PM’s talk of zealously protecting India’s “economic interests” and his minister’s making India-generated data about everything (every little digital transaction, digitized bank account data and digitized bits of personal information of a billion and 400 million Indians however gathered) a universal commons, as it were, where any country can graze and mine data for its purposes, are contradictory policies. And with Goel & Co. formally conceding access to Indian “government data” and opening up government procurement to the British, will the European Union, the United States, Japan, and whichever other country seeks a free trade agreement be far behind in demanding similar consideration?

Indian government procurement contracts at the central, state, and local levels worth some $750 billion annually are now opened to bidding by foreign companies — a more deleterious development for local industry cannot be imagined, but here we have the Modi regime permitting it! This subject has been dealt with in previous posts.

This post is about the two other issues: First, digital sovereignty, and secondly, the quite astonishing negotiating error of not including major streams of transfer of India’s wealth to America by the Commerce Ministry when negotiating an FTA with the Trump Admin. After all, what is trade but the transfer of wealth from one country to another.

But first, digital sovereignty. It has two components — “source codes” and “digital data”. Source codes refers to the software behind all goods and services. “The most surprising giveaway”, write Smita Purushottam and Parminder Jeet Singh in an op/ed — “What has been missed is India’s digital sovereignty”, The Hindu, Aug 2, that everybody in government ought to read, “is on India’s sovereign right to seek ex-ante access to the source code for foreign digital goods and services, even for those deemed sensitive.” (Ex-ante, is a Latin phrase denoting predictions and forecasts about future events, and with reference to CETA means that India cannot insist on source codes for anything the country may buy from the UK even though software is integral to nearly all products and services.) This, as Purushottam and Parminder point out, is “a 180-degree turn away from [India’s] steadfast stand in the World Trade Organisation”.

The source code issue in defence is exemplified, for instance, Dassault Avions refusing to part with the source codes from the Rafale combat aircraft that the Indian Air Force and navy have bought at enormous expense to the exchequer (at last count exceeding $35 billion). No source codes means India cannot integrate its missiles to this combat platform. Why has the Modi government not insisted on source codes as part and parcel of the multibillion dollar deals? Perhaps, Paris was aware for many years that New Delhi was prepared to cutout the source code issue from its FTAs , as now proven by CETA. Who knows?

Purushottam is a former Indian ambassador to Switzerland and founder of a remarkable little organisation — SITARA (Science, Indigenous Technology, Advanced Research Accelerator), comprising a team of domain expert volunteers in the forefront of pushing indigenous technology to an Indian government and military inclined, at the drop of the proverbial hat, to “buy foreign”. I know of no other diplomat who, in retirement, has done more substantive work in the nationalist cause. And Parminder is arguably the leading expert on digital sovereignty in the country. Their views are known to the government. Both of them should have been an inalienable part of the Commerce Ministry teams negotiating the FTAs, but are not.

Incidentally, the US, recognizing that security, regulatory and law enforcement imperatives require source codes, reversed its stand on source code prohibitions. Washington likewise backtracked on “granting equal and non-discriminatory access” to government data (which in an earlier era represented “government transparency”) to foreign countries in its FTAs. The Modi government, in its wisdom or lack of it, has taken an exactly reverse tack to what America has done even when such modified position grievously hurt the national interest.

But the Modi regime — flowing against the current — reversed itself , for no sensible reason, on the source codes and access to government data issues thereby centrally endangering India’s digital sovereignty and, principally, national security. It has created a new vast vulnerability from what was an extraordinary position of strength — its massive government data bank generated within India that the UK and other foreign countries will now be able to exploit at will. “It is incomprehensible”, write Purushottam and Parminder “why India with intention to become an Artificial Intelligence (AI) super power” would accept in principle that government data “is not a sovereign resource.” Facilitating easy foreign access to this data will, they warn, “erode India’s competitive advantage” in using its own data to create Indian AI products. Such as its own large language models. And further, that foreign states with access could easily weaponise the massive Indian information bank against India.

After all Artificial Intelligence is nothing more than machines discerning patterns in mountains of data — the larger the data pool the better, at phenomenally high compute speeds, to provide options to the decision maker in the corporate world, government, and the military.

Providing further evidence that Goel and his Commerce Ministry babus are a bunch of reckless dunderheads, they agreed to further consultations with the UK government on “free flow of data” and “data localisation” — the two most contested issues in the AI field, and denotes they write, “a dangerous regress and visible vulnerability” with regard to the country’s long held positions. Again, the US as the leader in the AI field along with China, has withdrawn from propagating these issues, even as India heads blindly into digital bondage because, as Purushottam and Parminder also point out, FTA texts will end up defining the global digital order. In this situation India can opt for the Western big-tech-oriented digital architecture or preserve its digital autonomy and sovereignty — it cannot do both at the same time. And once in, and the deeper India is entangled, the more difficult it will be for the country to extricate itself.

As in the foreign and military policy spheres, in the digital area too the Indian government has so far blundered along, keeping its head above water by being “reactive”, with no “clear road map” of where it wants to go. This policy path of not knowing where to go and how to get there is a liability dragging down the country. Per Purushottam and Parminder what is desperately needed is the formulation of “a full-fledged digital security” and “digital industrialization” policy, which alone will enable the government to negotiate from a strong position and to “create the space to become a digital super power” rather than remain a “digital colony”, which is what FTAs like CETA will end up doing.

—————

But, alas, the national interest is hostage to the tender mercies of the generalist diplomats and civil servants running the show, even as Modi believes he is doing so! In the recent past, it obtained for the country the 2008 nuclear civilian cooperation deal negotiated by the generalist joint secretary and now minister, S Jaishankar, that strangled India’s ambitions of becoming a hefty thermonuclear weapons power until such time as the country gets a government with the will and the gumption to resume open-ended high-yield thermonuclear tests in the face of American opposition, and repays China for its nuclear missile arming of Pakistan by nuclear missile arming every country on the Chinese border. And now we have these generalist IAS-wallahs and their ilk screwing things up things fatally for India and complementing Jaishankar’s surrender of the country’s thermonuclear security by surrendering its digital sovereignty as well, all without flinching.

But not content with undermining India digitally they are now ensuring, under Goel and the aegis of the Modi dispensation, that India slips into the status of America’s economic vassal. Or, why else would the instructions go out from the PM’s office to every ministry to make lists where concessions can be made, and products and services can be bought to reduce the trade deficit with the US? The Modi regime behaves like a mangy dog with its tail between its legs when approached by a bigger one making noises.

If with respect to digital security and sovereignty, the Commerce Ministry had better learn from Messrs Purushottam and Parminder and recover the lost ground fast, with respect to the nitty gritty of negotiating with Trump’s trade reps, the country’s interest would have been better served had they heeded Ajay Srivastava’s advice. Srivastava, a 1989 batch trade officer, left the comforts of a sarkari job to start a think tank — Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), which is doing yeoman service for the nation. In a Reuters story published by Business Standard, May 26, Srivastava revealed the fundamental flaw in Minister Goel and his Commerce Ministry’s strategy of limiting the negotiations to what Washington desires, just trade where India has a $44 billion surplus, a figure that has got Trump hot under his collar.

But this is only the visible part of the trade imbalance iceberg. What the Indian side has not done, Srivastava reveals, is bringing to the negotiating table the US revenues generated in India for the American education, digital services, financial activities, intellectual property rights payments, Hollywood, Netflix and entertainment industry, royalties, and defence sales sectors, which when added up would turn the tables all the way around, and show a $35-$40 billion US surplus. More than enough for India legitimately to justify imposing higher tariffs on these unaccounted American export sectors and activities the “massive earnings” from which, Srivastava says, “do not show up in the narrow goods trade statistics. When you factor them in…the US…is sitting pretty.”

Srivastava deconstructs the “the non-trade” figures of the US trade surplus with India thus: Indian students payout to American universities in Fiscal 2025 is $35 billion ($25 billion in tuition and $10 billion in living expenses); Tech giants — Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, et al earn from India some $15-20 billion, American Financial Institutions and Consultants earn another $10 -$15 billion, and Global Capability Centers that create and innovate new technologies, services, and products for the American majors take in $10-$15 billion, and IPR payouts in pharmaceuticals, et al amount to $1-$1.5 billion. All this adds up — at the highest end of the revenue scale to some $86.5 billion. (Not sure why in the Reuters story Srivastava pegs this transfer of Indian wealth to only $35-$40 billion when it is more than twice that amount!)

So, how come the geniuses led by Goel in the Commerce Ministry, and other resident economic geniuses in the Government of India (in the PM’s panel of Economic Advisers, for instance) missed such a vast amount of wealth being yearly shuffled off to the US right before their eyes? Talk of being robbed blind. Shouldn’t Modi demote Goel to Animal Husbandry or something lesser and send the generalist babus assisting Goel responsible for this ridiculous situation, packing?

It is a situation where the Modi government is cringy and fearful of the next Trump strike, when the figures show that, far from India being on the defensive — something the Indian government reflexively adopts in any interaction with the US and the West, the Modi regime should be on the offensive in the trade negotiations with the Trump Administration, and talk of raising tariffs on US imports to equalize the transfers of wealth.

But will Modi, even at this late stage, do what’s beneficial for the National Interest and scrap any talk of any more buys to placate Trump, and stand up to Washington or, will he, as is likely, do as he has done repeatedly — cave in to every big power in sight — to the US, China, and whoever else next comes before him?

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India’s Modi & Brazil’s Lula — what a contrast in tackling Trump

Posted on July 31, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi’s February 2025 visit with Trump]

The perils and pitfalls of getting close to America and Trump were obviously not studied in any seriousness by the Indian government before Narasimha Rao began the movement in the early 1990s towards a US-tilted foreign policy — the dangers of which I have been warning incessantly about in my books and other writings. This skewed policy took wing with Manmohan Singh’s regime when his chief negotiator S Jaishankar, then MEA joint secretary (americas), fetched for the country the most disastrous one-sided nuclear cooperation deal (2008) imaginable that killed off India’s chances of ever emerging as a muscular thermonuclear weapon state. That policy flowered even more with Modi starting in 2014 with S Jaishankar again, this time as minister Sancho Panza, that has resulted in a policy of multi-billion dollar arms buys to gain American friendship that resulted in all sorts of vintage weapons and platforms (M-777 howitzers, C-17s, C-130s) in Indian inventory at huge cost, and has landed the country in such a sorry pass that these days Trump seeks by choice to beat up on Modi and India in lieu of anyone else to bully and badger!

Readers of this blog may have noticed the recent flurry of articles and op/eds by the country’s media commentariat (featuring retired foreign secretaries, diplomats, and such) suddenly discovering how perfidious America can be — something that I have been sounding the tocsin about over a very, very long time. The media has been party to popularising the view that Donald Trump in his second term would come through for his “friend” Narendra Modi and help India reach the “viksit Bharat” goal which, incidentally, is still the delusion driving the country’s foreign policy. After being slapped silly and mercilessly taunted by Trump, it is still not certain Modi will take umbrage. Or, to put it another way, how much more outrageously and offensively would Trump have to behave for Modi to respond? Because it is not just Modi who is being denigrated but also India, or is the Prime Minister unaware of this?

The confusion and perplexity at this adverse turn of events is mirrored in the actions of Modi, Jaishankar, and the MEA-NSC lot that had laid such great store by Piyush Goel and his commerce ministry babus reaching a “mutually beneficial” Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with America, little anticipating that the Indian government was rushing headlong into a tariff ambush Trump was laying for them. That Trump’s intention from the start has always been more than tariffs was plain enough — it is to make America’s European and Asian treaty allies and strategic partners, especially India, also its economic vassals. Economic vassalage, Trump and his advisers have determined, would be easiest to impose on Modi’s India considering how the Indian PM and his foreign minister, Jaishankar, have sought to ingratiate themselves, in big ways and small, to Washington and the West generally since 2014.

The immediate impact of 25% US tariff on Indian exports is bad enough, exceeding the 15% rate arbitrarily imposed on Japan, and 19% on Philippines and Indonesia in Asia. It is the Indian contracts for Russian oil and military equipment that are going to draw the biggest penalties and these imposts will amount to tens of billions of dollars. The grander aim appears to be, proverbially, to kill two birds with a single stone, i.e., to collapse the BRICS combine in which India, China and Russia are prominent members. BRICS, potentially an economic giant, is seen as the greatest danger to the US retaining its economic status as the ‘numero uno’ power. His fear is that BRICS is large enough, has the most dynamic economies of the world, to do serious damage to America’s standing if it also leads the charge in de-dollarising international trade. India’s rupee-rouble energy and defence transactions, and China’s preference for trading with Southeast Asian nations in its own currency — yuan, is for the US a red flag.

But to undermine BRICS, the US first seeks to reduce the strong alpha male-strong man leadership of the leading countries in this grouping — Putin, Xi, Modi, Luiz Lula da Silva, and Cyril Ramaphosa in the eyes of their domestic audiences. Putin is nearly immune to Washington pressure. Xi holds the promise of a state visit to Beijing that Trump wants as leverage for the US to not behave outrageously towards China. In fact, such is Xi’s command over Trump, and Washington is so eager to please Beijing, the Taiwan President Lai Ching-te was refused a transit through the US to visit the only three Latin American states that recognise Taiwan — Paraguay, Guatemala, and Belize. And this mind, is the America the Modi regime had all along hoped would act in terms of India as bulwark against China! Ramaphosa was insulted in the White House with Trump creating a controversy out of thin air by talking of “white genocide” of South African farmers. The South African, in turn, mocked Trump’s understanding of anything, leave alone anything related to Africa, and South Africa in particular. The recently elected President Lula in Brazil, however, took the fight to America. Calling Trump’s tariff threat “blackmail”, Lula, doubling on the provocation, declared that “the gringo will not order this president around.” Suitably elated with their man showing brass, Brazilians have responded by increasing their popular support for their presidente.

Contrasting Lula’s or even Ramaphosa’s strong reaction to a deliberately insulting Trump to Modi’s, who caved in instantly to Trump’s “request” (by the US president’s own account) and ended the Sindoor hostilities, is to realise just how little America really thinks of Modi and India, and contrarily how much Lula’s telling Trump where to get off has raised Brazil’s profile in the world at a time when European states and Japan are falling over themselves to prostrate before the US President. In fact, if as Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister and arguably the leader with the keenest personal insight into Trump, said that the EU’s conceding a 15% tariff rate was the consequence of Trump having the European Commission chairperson, Ursula von der Leyen , who negotiated this deal, “for breakfast”, then by his reckoning, the Trump Administration surely made a lunch out of the Indian minister Goel and his commerce ministry bumblers, and more centrally of the Modi government. But is there even a squeak out of New Delhi other than Rajnath Singh’s unconvincing rebuttal on Sindoor in Parliament to Trump’s unending insults?

What is unfolding is a tragedy for India masquerading as power play. The next time Trump talks of his “friend” Modi, New Delhi should be prepared for another American strike! The fact is the US President and his advisers have concluded that Modi is an easy mark and India a pliant enough state for Trump to crown his tariff war with success by arm-twisting India into America’s economic fold. Because manipulating Ramaphosa, Lula, Xi and Putin is deemed a more onerous task.

I mean, would Modi even remotely consider setting Trump and the US right by, say, freezing all defence acquisitions from America, informing Boeing about a stop to offtaking its passenger aircraft by any Indian airline, creating difficulties in the case-by-case consideration of any American request with regard to the four foundational accords? And, mull not offering Washington leverage by ending all talk in official channels of H1B visas for Indian techies (who will take care of themselves)?

Posted in Africa, arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Brazil, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence procurement, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indo-Pacific, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 27 Comments

On a down path, Jaishankar leading

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Jaishankar & other SCO foreign ministers with Xi presiding]

India is tending irrefutably downwards in the external realm, perhaps, for the first time in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 11 years in office to-date.

The fiasco of Op Sindoor May 7-10 was the curtain raiser. I had wondered in a post on the mystery of no deaths other than that of family members of the Terrorist Azhar Mahmood in the Indian strikes on Muridke and Bahawalpur on May 7. That was cleared up early by foreign minister S Jaishankar’s revelation that Islamabad had been pre-warned about the incoming missile attacks on Muridke and Bahawalpur along with an assurance that no military facilities would be struck, and that this was a pre-offer to GHQ, Rawalpindi, to “stand down” after the attacks went through. And how in the wake of the effective May 10 missile and drone barrage, as it were, it was the Pakistan military that sought a ceasefire. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiVNgeKrm-E)

This raises the legitimate question: whether Jaishankar, who is tasked with implementing Modi’s policies re: US — to get close, and China —to give no offence, wasn’t being too clever by half. Jaishankar who apparently prides himself on knowing the American system decided he’d win some brownie points with Washington by alerting the Trump Administration to the M-B strikes before Islamabad was contacted. It boomeranged on India in two ways.

Firstly, Pakistan military, confident that the Indian armed services would be lax, not expecting a hard Pakistani response because New Delhi had given the game away (with its warning of specific targeting) saw it as an opportunity, using the Saab2000 AEWACS and the Chinese satellite guidance, to take down a few unsuspecting IAF aircraft. And also confident that with the US government put in the know by New Delhi, the Indian response even to the takedown of IAF planes — which in Asim Munir’s mind evened out the exchange and the Pak military’s ego was salved, would be limited. This proved to be the case. Why else, if the Indian government felt that it had militarily the upper hand, would it accept Pakistan’s offer of ceasefire May 10 considering Pakistan had hit back and its narrative was gaining traction worldwide at India’s expense? Recall that not a single country supported India’s actions.

Secondly, by informing Washington first, or at all, Jaishankar had set Trump up for an easy boastful diplomatic romp, and the Modi regime for a fall. Not one to miss out on hyperbolicising the “nuclear” aspect of any conflict, especially one that can be given a religious colouring an India-Pak, Hindu-Muslim, skirmish and trumpeting his own exaggerated role in defusing a flashpoint. He is so desperate for a Nobel Peace Prize — remember he wants to match Obama, who won the prize for nothing more than a single peace speech in Prague— surely, in his blunderbuss fashion Trump has done more!!

Short of broadcasting it through PIB, the Modi government had made the restricted nature of India’s Pahalgam retaliation amply clear, once it broached the topic of Indian strikes to the Trump Admin. So, any follow up actions by the Indian army to capitalise on the situation were ruled out, given that there was no offensive warlike disposition of the army, in any case.

What then was the whole Sindoor episode about other than to polish up Trump’s fictional narrative to boost his Nobel chances??? The government put out that Modi was steaming in frustration with Trump for stealing his thunder, by taking undue credit for shutting down any Indian military escalation as Washington claimed was the case when, other than, the intra-mural (as I called it) motivation to show up Munir for his puerile “48 hour” threat with the Indian May 10 missile attacks, nothing else was on the cards.

What this episode revealed was Modi’s low standing with Trump because of the latter’s conviction that the Indian PM would not publicly and personally refute his claims’s of his alleged central role in ending Sindoor. And further, that the Indian leader would swallow the insult of Munir’s notable welcome at the White House without in any way damaging the prospects of the Free Trade Agreement with India under negotiation, or hurting the general direction of bilateral relations. Again, Washington was proved right. Because commerce minister Piyush Goel, was gung-ho about an FTA, lining up India for concessions and economic giveaways, including $750 billion worth of annual Indian central, state, and local public procurement that, following the FTA lead with UK and EU, will permit American firms to bid for — driving a stake through the heart of Indian industry.

But Indian-origin —who else? — Washington Beltway think tankers are demanding more. Of India! One of them wants the Modi dispensation to reciprocate years of what he calls America’s “strategic altruism” with more giveaways. Perhaps, the American altruism includes Zbigniew Brzezinski — President Jimmy Carter’s NSA’s policy of encouraging China’s proliferation of nuclear weapon and missile technologies to Pakistan starting in 1979, continued by the incoming Reagan administration, in return for Pakistan army ISI’s staging the CIA’s mujahideen operation to undermine the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan. Just, may be, Jaishankar’s attitude resonates with such advice and India is returning love and bouquets for Trump’s brickbats!!

But shouldn’t the PM be concerned with the “practical” advice he has been getting from his foreign minister, Jaishankar, on how specifically to handle Washington and Trump, in particular? Japan, America’s closest ally in Asia, for example, decided to cancel the scheduled 1st July 2×2 meeting of foreign and defence ministers, to protest Trump’s tariffs and his pressuring Tokyo to increase its defence spending to 5% of GDP. And then here’s Modi’s India, pushed by Jaishankar, revealing plans for a surprise attack on Pakistani heartland, and expecting not only that Washington would be simpatico with the Op’s anti-terrorist slant, but would back it in the venture, entirely misreading the historically strong US commitment to Pakistan, and Trump’s special love and longing for tough-talking generals and in Munir’s case, a self-appointed “Field Marshal”. And more, the Indian government is preparing to “open up” India for American business — as reward for the Trump Admin doing what? Courtesy Jaishankar, for showing up Modi as a weak-kneed leader, and for getting political-diplomatic mud on India’s face. And for the Indian military — not known for being offensive-minded, reinforcing its reputation only for small time actions against a small time foe?

At the other end, there was Jaishankar’s trip to Beijing ostensibly to attend the SCO foreign ministers meet. But his being in the city for several days before the start of the conference led, as a Taiwan-based Indian academic noted, in snide Chinese media reports of India seeking to mend its relations with China and preparing in effect to do what it does best — kowtow! Indian industry’s shortages of rare earths materials and base chemicals for its pharmaceutical factories and electronics components for its telecommunications manufacturers, and the troubling matter of an active Chinese military role with its Beidou LEO satellite constellation the PAF plugged into during Sindoor, and China’s successful forays in winning over the states neighbouring India — Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh and, of course, Pakistan, are all seemingly concerns inducing New Delhi to cry Uncle! And for Jaishankar to go cup in hand to his counterpart, Wang Yi.

This dependence on China was engineered by MEA fixated on warm relations with China over decades. After all, what does the Indian Foreign Service officers believe their remit is?? It is apparently not to think strategically, whether in economic or military terms. Because if economic strategies were their concern, they would have long ago warned the Indian government to incentivise the production of electronics components and base chemicals and such, and urged setting up a rare earths refining capacity. Just to make clear, rare earths minerals are available everywhere in lesser or larger quantities — so mining and refining becomes ultimately a costing exercise — what is the country willing to pay for getting indigenously-produced rare earths, that’s the question. In Jaishankar’s MEA calculus, rare earths and base chemicals from China constitute an economic option — no more informed than the Chawri Bazar trader who imports some lampshades! Meanwhile, the Chinese leadership and state were busy cornering not just the global rare earths market by taking ownership of mines and unmined reserves in Africa, Central Asia and South America, but also the manufacturing jobs, and leading the charge on cutting edge science and technology, especially the defining technology of tomorrow — Artificial Intelligence, to boot.

Meanwhile, a decade plus into his job, Modi is still mulling over whether and how much to de-bureaucratise the economy! And ease up on the land, labour and taxation laws to allow investment flows in the manufacturing sector to flood in.

So, how about military strategics? Well, the less said the better I still have the then Foreign Secretary K Raghunath’s words ringing in my ears when I asked him in an NSAB’s session with MEA in 1998 about India’s alighting on a tit-for-tat measure — and I have recounted this interaction umpteen time on this blog and in my books, of nuclear missile arming countries on China’s periphery with nuclear weapons — an albeit belated response to Beijing’s cold blooded equipping of Pakistan with the same along with the transfer of all requisite technologies and designing expertise, even as the US rode shotgun on this illicit commerce. And all that the wretched MEA babu had to say to the NSAB was that reciprocal action was “NOT A PRACTICABLE SOLUTION”!!!

Did anyone in Zhongnanhai caution Chairman Dengxiaoping against such n-proliferation when he embarked on his “Nuclearising Pakistan” actions because it was not befitting “a responsible state”? Or, did anyone in Washington cry halt! when the US first proliferated to Britain and later France, and still later permitted France to nuclear-wise help Israel get over the weapons hump? Or, anyone in Kremlin stop Khrushchev from sending in the mid-1950s nuclear weapons and missile materials, technologies, and experts to China to beef up Communist bloc solidarity?

It falls then to the “responsible state” theming MEA to successfully canvas AGAINST India doing what all the major countries have done when proliferation served their national interests — PROLIFERATE to do in the enemy, the more recklessly the better to have the intended effort. Would Beijing be acting the way it does now with India had New Delhi grown a bit of spine and transferred entirely indigenously developed weapons technologies and expertise to states seeking absolute security against China?

Guess who stops India now from doing the same? It is Modi’s fear of the US and China, and the efforts by MEA personages, like Jaishankar, to bolster that fear to ensure not only that India does NOT use the self defence provision — Article 51 of the UN Charter to onpass sensitive N-tech to friendly countries bordering China, but actually to hamstring the country by pushing it towards shackling itself with still more constraints. Such as membership in, say, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the MEA craves as they have already done vis a vis missile technology by having India sign the Missile Technology Control Regime, join the Wassenaar Agreement, the Australia Group, et al. These are MEA personnel seeking to curry favour with Washington and European governments because their children all reside in the US and the West. A former IFS man and Congress party apparatchik Mani Shankar Aiyar reckoned that over 95% of senior Indian diplomats’ progeny are so placed! Senior Indian military officers too have been part of this game for some 30 years now.

Everybody in the Indian government seems to be up for sale. Who in the Indian government can an Indian citizen anymore trust to do well by the country?

US ambassador John Galbraith during the Kennedy years confessed that a cabinet decision would be communicated to him for a bottle of Scotch! This was the Sixties. Today the price has gone up and is in the form — not of secret offshore accounts — that’s passe’ — but of sons and daughters of officials being taken care of by “scholarships” to Ivy League universities, jobs with Western companies, and resident visas. Talk of a “bikauu” (purchasable) Third World Indian government bureaucracy!

India’s ultimate foreign and military policy tragedy is that foreign interests have always driven them. If, in the early years Nehru relied on the Mountbatten-Blackett duo, in the main, to shape the external policy and national security outlook and approach, today we have our own leaders, diplomats, secretaries to the government and the lot, and senior military officers channeling India into the American/Western dependency trap, while mouthing the “strategic autonomy”-“Nonalignment 3.0” claptrap

Why not just hang a placard — “India for SALE”?

Posted in Afghanistan | Tagged , , , , | 66 Comments

Will India crumble before China, again?

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama]

This has been a bad year for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and, therefore, for India and Indian foreign-military policy.

First, the reelection of Donald Trump to his second term as US President isn’t panning out the way Modi had hoped. It seems the Indian PM mistook the American’s transactionalist statecraft for the kind of personalised diplomacy Modi thinks he is good at. Op Sindoor proved that the PM had got it all wrong — and this was the second big shock. Far from reining in General Asim Munir on the terrorism issue, Trump pressured India into pulling out from a conflict that was moving towards an end favouring Delhi, to save Pakistan from a serious military situation and Munir his job. And far from reacting badly, we have foreign minister S Jaishankar moseying over to Washington to reassure the US that “our defence partnership is today truly one of the most consequential pillars of the relationship” and for the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to indicate what such a partnership really means: “complete several major pending US defence sales to India”. Rajnath Singh, supportive of Hegseth’s understanding, asked the latter to hurry up and deliver Apache attack helicopters! In other words, Modi’s India is willing to eat crow to remain on America’s side, and help its defence industry along by buying all its old hardware but expensively, even if it results in the blighting of the prospects of the indigenous Tejas, AMCA and the Light Combat Helicopter, for starters.

The third bad turn of events is upon us — the likely announcement on his 90th birthday by His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama — the embodiment of the Buddha on earth, of his successor by “reincarnation”. He has already declared that his reincarnation will be announced even if by means of “emanations” and that the 15th Dalai Lama would be a “free land” born Tibetan, which rules out China the nearest thing to George Orwell’s authoritarian, heavily policed, state of “1984”. The emanations path suggests itself when the Dalai Lama has to be found even as the current one is alive. “There have been notable instances of recognized emanations in recent times within the Nyingma and Sakya schools of Tibetan Buddhism”, writes Kelsang Aukatsang, the Dalai Lama’s representative or ambassador to the US, leading to the recognition of “a 13- or 14-year-old, [to] transmit [Dalai Lama’s] wisdom [to], and ensure continuity in spiritual leadership. This would also resolve the long-standing issue of an interregnum—the often decades-long gap between the death of a Dalai Lama and the maturity of his recognized reincarnation.”

“Interregnums are often precarious; throughout Tibetan history, regents of young Dalai Lamas have faced challenges in maintaining authority” says Aukatsang. “Such gaps in leadership have historically led to factional infighting, financial mismanagement, weakened central authority, political instability, and increased vulnerability to external threats.” Another important reform to ease the succession crisis that is possibly up for consideration, he explains, “is the creation of a council charged with implementing the Dalai Lama’s written instructions on succession. This body should include representatives from the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism—Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Gelug—as well as Bon, Tibet’s indigenous, pre-Buddhist tradition. By establishing such a council and clearly outlining its mandate, the Dalai Lama would address a critical gap, as there is presently no formal mechanism to ensure that his succession guidelines are carried out, or by whom. This council should report to the Gaden Phodrang Trust. A diverse, credible council would offer both transparency and expertise for what is likely to be a complex and contested process as well as guard against mounting efforts by the [Chinnese Communist Party and [President] Xi [Jinping] to co-opt this sacred tradition for political ends.”

A furious Communist China which, has indulged in skullduggery in extremis, wants to control the agency of the Dalai Lama in order to establish full and complete control over the Tibetan population and crown its 70 year long campaign of Tibetan genocide, by reducing the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism to a Chinese Communist Party apparatchik. It is insisting that only Beijing has the authority to appoint the new Dalai Lama and, in fact, proposed the “golden urn” path to selecting the next Dalai Lama by drawing the name from among several candidates. This method was used only once, to select the 11th Dalai Lama.

Except, as Aukatsang reveals, “Any possibility of finding common ground with the Chinese leadership on the issue of succession was shattered in 1995, when China hijacked the reincarnation process of the 10th Panchen Lama, the second-ranking religious figure in Tibet. The Chinese government abducted the legitimate 11th Panchen Lama, then just 6 years old, and his family, installing a state-approved replacement. The real Panchen Lama has been missing ever since, making 2025 the 30th year of his enforced disappearance.” ( https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/02/dalai-lama-reincarnation-china-tibet-relgion/ )

After deeply mulling the relevance of the institution in the modern day of the Dalai Lama to Tibetans, to Tibet, to Buddhism, and to the world, and whether he shouldn’t end it — because China’s grip on Tibet is only strengthening, His Holiness decided to everyone’s relief that there would be a successor. Because he said of the overwhelming demand from his advisers — the high lamas, the Tibetan exile community in India numbering some 85,000, and [bcause of] representations by Buddhists and Buddhist organisations in the Himalayan region, and by “Mongolia, Buddhist republics of the Russian Federation, and Buddhists in Asia including mainland China.” These constituencies of the Dalai Lama could be mustered for a response to a question someone might ask — as Joseph Stalin did when there was talk of involving the Pope in peacemaking during the Second World War: “The Pope! How many divisions has he got?”

In all the three bad turns enumerated above, it should be apparent to all that it was the Indian government that brought them on, and is responsible for them.

And this bad record it seems will continue. Consider the uneasy silence of the MEA and the Indian government on the issue of recognising the 15th Dalai Lama when his reincarnation is announced by the 14th. Is it a prelude to India capitulating? Beijing has already made it plain that it would look askance at New Delhi siding with the Tibetan Government in Exile, because it claims the installation of the 15th Dalai Lama is central to its “One China” principle.

Considering what’s at stake, it is a glorious opportunity for Prime Minister Modi to prove he is no pushover and that he cares less whether Xi and Zhongnanhai would be troubled and upset with India’s support for the institution of a free Dalai Lama in a free India, and if that means the Chinese People’s Liberation Army acting up on the 4,700 kms long disputed border, well, the Indian military is up for it!

It is an opportunity for Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party regime to reverse the worst foreign policy mistake India made during Jawaharlal Nehru’s time of ceding Tibet without a fight, of pulling back from covertly supporting the Khampa rebellion in the late 1950s, and thereafter doing everything possible to help elevate Communist China. In 1955-56, it generously handed over the UN Security Council permanent seat vacated by Chiangkaishek’s Taiwan and offered to India by both the US and USSR, over to Mao’s China and, in a similar fit of self-abnegation, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, even more weak-headed and weak-kneed than Nehru, in 2003 approved and facilitated China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation! India has been Beijing’s favourite diplomatic, economic and military punching bag.

But what can a punching bag do other than Nothing?

Is everybody’s punching bag what Modi wants India to be known as? If not, then there’s a strategic opportunity staring him in the face. First, loudly declare the Indian government’s whole-hearted support for the “sovereign status” of the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala, and, for the 15th Dalai Lama — whenever that reincarnation is announced.

Next, boldly issue a demarche to the Xi regime that India resiles wholly from the previous one-sided acceptance of the “One China” concept. But that New Delhi might re-consider the “One China” principle ONLY IF the Chinese government formally recognises the “One India” principle, inclusive of the erstwhile “princely kingdom” of Kashmir, inclusive of all of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the principalities of Hunza, Nagar, Yasin, Koh-Ghizer, Punial, Chilas, Darel, and TangirHunza in the greater Gilgit-Baltistan region, and the Shaksgam Valley gifted illegally by Ayub Khan to China in 1963. And make these exchanges public.

The simple bargain: China can have “One China” if India gets recognition from Beijing for “One India”. And it should be made amply clear that this “One China” DOES NOT INCLUDE TAIWAN — a separate entity, with which India could establish formal diplomatic relations.

The Indian government needs to end — the lily-livered poufs inhabiting the China Study Group, the apex body that habitually misshapes the country’s China policy, permitting! — India’s policy of unilateral giveaways, and declare that hereon bilateral relations with China will be on a strictly reciprocal basis. You do something, India will return it in exactly the same measure. And that means New Delhi doing an — Om Ganeshesynamah! on transferring, overtly or covertly, strategic/nuclear warheaded missiles, including the Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles, to any country on China’s border which wants absolute security for itself! This move is entirely legal under the Self-Defence Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Revenge, as US President Richard Nixon said, is “a dish best served cold”.

Putting steel in India’s China policy will, moreover, automatically alert the US, Europe, the world to a changed India, raise its stock and standing and, in Asia, where India does not command much respect, increase the desire to strategically partner it in forming a strong bulwark against Beijing’s hegemonistic tendencies. It will be the first time, Modiji, that India would really amount to something.

It is time India, Mr Prime Minister, walked its talk. Your government cannot keep yakking about terrorism and Pakistan — seemingly the full time occupation of Jaishankar and his MEA, even as China makes trouble for the country every which way without Delhi responding in any form. There’s no reason to fear China — it has more troubles than it acknowledges, and its military is good, but mostly on paper. It has never been lately tested in operations. The Indian army is, if nothing else, an operationally blooded force — faced live fire for the last 70-odd years, in insurgencies in the northeast, in Kashmir. The PLA, in contrast, has NOT been in battle since it was hammered by the Vietnamese irregulars in 1979 — even before the regular Vietnamese forces took the field!

[And, Mr Prime Minister, would you please dissolve the wretched China Study Group? Because there’s no greater national security liability.]

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Whom to blame for the downed IAF aircraft in Sindoor

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

The statement in the Press today that made a splash was by the Indian Defence Attache, Jakarta, Captain Shiv Kumar, Indian Navy (https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/op-sindoor-losses-due-to-restrictions-on-hitting-military-targets-navy-officer-101751204975610.html). It was in reply to the issue of five downed IAF aircraft in Op Sindoor — three Rafales, and one each of Su-30MKI and MiG-29, raised by Tommy Tamtomo, Vice Chairman of the Indonesia Centre for Air Power Studies at a seminar on “Analysis of the Pakistan-India Air Battle and Indonesia’s Anticipatory Strategies from the Perspective of Air Power”. The Pakistan Air Force actions were part of its Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos.

“India lost a lot, but Pakistan also lost a lot. Maybe more than India,” Tamtomo said at the seminar before disclosing that PAF losses were six fighter jets, two AWACS aircraft and a military transport plane.

Tamtomo’s figures of IAF and PAF losses were no doubt conveyed to Jakarta by the PAF, which has a close relationship with the air force of Indonesia — not just a fellow Muslim majority state but, population-wise (242 million), the largest Islamic state in the world, and verily Dar al-Islam.

Captain Kumar admitted the downing of IAF aircraft without confirming the numbers of aircraft lost, and attributed these losses to “the constraint given by the political leadership to not attack the military establishments and their air defences…No military installations, no civil installations, nothing which was not connected to terrorists was to be targeted,” he added. “After the loss,”, he explained, “we changed our tactics and went for their military installations. We first achieved suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) and destruction of enemy air defences (DEAD)… and that’s why all our attacks could easily go through using surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles…On May 8, 9 and 10, there was complete air superiority by India,”

It is revealing that even as the defence ministry spokesperson declined to comment on Kumar’s supposedly controversial remarks, the Indian embassy in Jakarta likely prompted by the MEA piped in, saying, what else, that Captain Kumar was quoted “out of context”. It went on to elaborate that “The media reports are a mis-representation of the intention and thrust of the presentation made by the speaker. The presentation conveyed that the Indian Armed Forces serve under civilian political leadership unlike some other countries in our neighbourhood. It was also explained that the objective of Operation Sindoor was to target terrorist infrastructure and the Indian response was non-escalatory.”

Unwittingly, the Jakarta Embassy put its finger on the nub of the issue — the instructions of “the civilian political leadership” which the IAF scrupulously followed apparently to its detriment.

Before examining the IAF’s part in this Sindoor fiasco, let us consider the political leadership’s role which, in this case, means Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role. Nothing, of course, is known about how and why Modi articulated the instructions as Captain Kumar has relayed them, and whether the PM consulted any outside experts or merely told his cabinet of noddy-heads, and that was that. If he did ask the defence minister Rajnath Singh and foreign minister S Jaishankar for their views, what if anything meaningful might they have chimed in with?

There was almost a fortnight between the Pahalgam killings (April 22) and the first day of Sindoor (May 7) so there was more than enough time for all the parties involved in decision making in Delhi to deliberate deeply before alighting on the punitive military response. In lieu of any real information or even leaks to the media, one can only speculate about what happened. So, permit me to indulge in speculation.

The terrorist attack was the provocation. Reasonably the retaliation would involve striking back at the terrorist groups — Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, the usual suspects. It was a really tremendous decision by Modi to not restrict the strikes to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir but to hit the LeT and JeM bases at Muridke and Bahawalpur — across the international border, thereby establishing an important and necessary precedent for the future. It was a response that had been contemplated for a few decades before Modi got up the nerve to finally order it. Fine!

The strikes went home, but obviously the Pakistanis had intel/forewarning, because they had emptied the madrassahs in these terrorist centres of people. It is a mystery though why the chief JeM villain, Masood Azhar, was in the know but his family was not informed, whereupon there was that very public lamenting by Masood about his loss.

The important thing to wonder is what Modi expected to happen by way of a Pakistani response. Was he really briefed by RAW (?), Jaishankar (?) or someone else to believe that immediate post-strikes on M&B there would be no Pakistani miltary reaction? Not even after Director General, Military Operations, Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai’s call to his Pakistani opposite number, telling him about the very limited intent behind the hits on just the terrorist bases, and Major General Kashif Abdullah’s brusque and abrupt ending of that conversation?

It is clear that the Indian army was on alert but did not expect to go into action because there were no hard preparations whatsoever for any ingress into POK or across the international border and, CNS Tripathi’s statements about ships on station and his force’s readiness to rattle some Pakistani naval teeth, notwithstanding, the Indian Navy was not really expecting to blockade/blowup Karachi — harbour, city, or whatever.

Why was this so? Why did no one in the government or in the armed services, expect a military response? Could it be because the government was assured that the Pakistan military would swallow its pride and lump it? If so, by whom?

Or, was it the view in government, perhaps Jaishankar’s/MEA’s, that with so transparent and forthcoming an approach, the Pakistan military would be deterred from reacting “disproportionately” for fear of creating ruction with the US, etc.

That doesn’t however explain why if the Indian armed forces were on alert to thwart an angry reaction, the IAF — and this is where the CAS, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, has some explaining to do, the Indian fighter planes were patrolling the border on a chowkidari mission without a clue about the Saab 2000 Erieye AEWACS (aerial early warning and control system) surveilling the Indian air space, tracking the Indian aircraft, and cueing the Pakistani JC-10s for the kills with the longrange PL-15Es fired safely from standoff range well within Pakistan.

The $ million Question: Where were the IAF’s radar mounted Embraer ERJ145 Netra AEWACS to monitor Pakistani air space and pick up on encrypted electronic signals passing between the Saab and the JC-10s? Obviously the Netras were altogether absent from the order of battle, why so? No Netras is why the Indian aircraft were flying in buddy formation, one behind the other, with the plane in the rear scanning the enemy air space. If so, then how is it that none of the buddy aircraft picked up on PAF’s loitering AEWACS or even the JC10s.

In this situation, it was natural that the PAF would capitalise on the opportunity — intimated by Ghai’s call to Abdullah which signalled to GHQ, Rawalpindi, that the Indians were not up for a full-fledged conflict, thereby setting up the unsuspecting IAF aircrft nicely for the kill. But after the first Rafale or whatever went down, why did the Air Ops under Air Marshal AK Bharti not instantly pull back the IAF patrollers deeper inside the country to avoid the easy targeting by the enemy, and reconsider how to neutralise the Erieye for starters. And how come the next four combat aircraft were downed in quick succession in like manner? Isn’t there a communications system linking aircraft to ground control and to each other — so how come none of the pilots in the aircraft downed later were aware of what was coming at them? And how come the IAF Ops centre couldn’t figure out the information fusing between the Saab, JC10s and the PL15Es, and how innovatively the PAF was using its assets?

Bharti’s statement at the May 11 media briefing that “We are in a combat scenario; losses are a part of combat. The question you must ask is if we have achieved our objective of decimating the terrorist camps. The answer is a thumping yes” was self-serving to say the least. Because the real question to ask is whether the downing of 5 combat aircraft — let’s take Tamtomo at his word, valued in excess of a BILLION DOLLARS worth the destruction of a few measly buildings in Muridke and Bahawalpur?

Sure, the strategic strikes on May 9 midnight-May 10 morning earned the IAF air dominance, OK. But what did the Indian military do with it? Why did the army do nothing with the open skies other than adhere so strictly to Modi’s orders that Ghai and Co. at the MO Directorate forgot they could use the freedom from aerial hindering by PAF to push for some real territorial gains — Haji Pir, etc as I have detailed in my previous posts, which would have radically changed the Kashmir reality.

But to return to the Prime Minister’s thinking: Surely there’s no equal to him on the political scene in his ability to read the politics of the country. But while he may have good common sense instincts, surely, he would have benefited from someone/anyone in the miltary, or from outside, telling him to drive the wedge when he could into POK.

And, by way of a lesson for the PM for the future: Decide your initial objective but warn the military that what follows after the first shot is fired is entirely their outlook, their business to see to the end, and for them to not do nothing while awaiting further instructions — but to rush through once the door is flung open!

The civilian control of the military is commendable, but once in war the control has to be ceded to the military. A war cannot be run from 7, Race Course Road. Not mind, that the Indian military would have done much with the control, had it been ceded to them in Sindoor. It is too passive-defensive-reactive a force by habit of mind to do anything of note in war

At the heart of the problem India has always had with Pakistan and China is this: While India in a fight always behaves, for no good reason, with an elevated sense of purpose, propriety and self-imposed restraint, the attitude of a scrappy Pakistan in particular is that it is in a knife fight. Guess what happens every time?!

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Finish the job! — Main lesson from Sindoor

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

Asked yesterday about requesting Israel to hold off attacking Iran in order to get a peace initiative going, US President Donald Trump replied that he could make such a request but it is difficult to ask “the winning side” to stop! [‘The Source’ with Kaitlin Collins, CNN, June 20, 2025]

Now extrapolate that comment to his intervention May 9-10 in the India-Pakistan clash that Trump insists he ended, but complains he has not received the publicity or the credit for! — and what can one conclude? Essentially, that by America’s reckoning India was NOT WINNING — or why else, by the Trumpian logic, would Modi stop the Indian military operation when he did?

Indeed, why did India end its actions as soon as Trump came on the scene? Prime Minister Modi’s and external affairs minister S Jaishankar’s weak, flustered, and entirely unconvincing reactions that successfuly striking the important Pakistan air force bases, including the PAF command, control, communications hub at Nur Khan in Chaklala, was in fact the sole strategic objective, having achieved which the Indian government had no further interest in prolonging the “war”, is laughable. Surely, there was more planned than just these aerial attacks. What could those plans be? Perhaps, “kabaddi tactics” — army lingo, as a former theatre commander told me, for taking some terrain features across the LOC? But Sindoor was bereft of even such small actions.

Or, just may be, Trump’s call put Indian military plans — whatever they were — on hold after the aerial strikes, as the Indian PM scrambled — almost a reflex tendency of the Indian government in the new millennium, to please and pacify the US President by ending Sindoor right there and then.

Except, it spelled a tragic end to what could have been game-changing developments, including a deliberate hiving off of, say, the Haji Pir Salient, a significant portion of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir territory that could have been executed with a Division-size force, with the Pakistani forces inside the Bulge aerially bombed into pulp with Indian air dominance, for the Indian army units to mop up.

Such an end would have left the Pakistan army high and dry — an entity for the Pakistani people to mock — after all could General Asim Munir have declared a great victory as he did after Sindoor, with the Indian tricolour flying over Haji Pir? Munir, far from awarding himself the Field Marshal’s baton might have seen his “superiors” in the Corps Commanders Conference — all graduates of the Pakistan Military Academy, Karkul, handing him — a parvenu from the Officer’s Training School, Mangla, his backside on a platter, and an ignoble retirement. Instead, he lunched with Trump, heard the US President tell him (according to BBC News in Urdu) how “honoured” he [Trump] was to meet him, and to say “I love Pakistan” and, satisfyingly, saw a re-hyphenation India and Pakistan. He returned home with his celebrity as the Prophet’s own — the Man who would realise Gazwa-i-Hind, burnished!

And all because, as usual, the Indian leadership lacked the strategic sense and understanding to push for the military advantage staring them in the face! This has happened many times in the past, most egregiously, when Indira Gandhi terminated the 1982 operation that would have led to the Israeli Air Force, staging out of Jamnagar and Udhampur, bombing the crap out of Kahuta, with the underground weapons complex at nearby Golra then under construction, and ending the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme and aspirations for good. But the likes of PN Haksar and other advisers prevailed, and Indira G called off the action — for fear, get this! – of negative international opinion! That Israeli op had planned on IsAF F-16s dropping precision bombs and F-15 flying escort (combat air patrol), and would have worked as did the previous such Israeli action in 1981 that took out the Osiraq reactor complex in Baghdad.

Now consider an alternative scenario and outcome: Prompted by US intel and US Central Command CINC army General Michael Kurilla that Pakistan is too useful to the US to allow it go down, Trump calls Modi, say, the evening of May 9th. Aware of the missile strikes planned for midnight, the Indian PM commits to nothing. By 1000 hrs May 10th the situation is clear — missiles have taken out most of the major Pakistani air bases and radar complexes (such as Sargodha) and no coordinated PAF air activity is now possible. Such actions as the PAF can still muster would be from satellite fields without the infrastruture to sustain heavy actions. So, India achieves air dominance over Pakistani skies.

Assuming the Indian air force had anticipated this turn of events and a cued-in army had instantly begun probing actions by 1200 hrs and full push into the Haji Pir area by 1600hrs. All this would have happened after Trump called again, by when Modi would have stalled the White House by simply not getting on the phone — very busy with engagements, etc, after all the PM has a country to run that is multiple times more complex than the US, so very busy! Meanwhile, the US Kh-11 satellites and their humint penetrated deep inside GOI would have alerted Trump that the Indian army would take Haji Pir. A desperate Munir-Shehbaz would call Trump for help. Trump would find Modi not coming to the phone — again, very busy! By May 15-16, with IAF raining down bombs and Indian 155mm howitzers continuously pounding the Pakistani army formations inside the Haji Pir Bulge for the previous 5-6 days and the Indian army taking care of details, the Haji Pir, in this shock Indian action would have been vacated of any Pakistani presence, or would have had a “bag” of Pakistani army POWs.

So, finally when the PM would reach a phone, he could explain to Trump how he was busy, among other things, propitiating the Lord God of Odisha, Lord Jagannath, etc and gone into great detail about Odisha culture and so on, and bored Trump to tears. It would have completely thrown off Trump, mystified him no end, and upended his talking points. And Modi would explain to Trump the new reality on the ground — Haji Pir in J&K and how all was well with the world. And alert Trump to the fact that in case of future terrorist incidents, more parts of POK would similarly, automatically, and permanently be annexed and absorbed, and quote the relevant sections of international law on ceasefire lines, to stress the legitimacy of Indian military actions!

The US President’s relaying any idiotic Pakistani nuclear threat could have been met with a quiet dare to Munir to just try it. That would have done it for Munir, Pakistan, and American interference in Kashmir affairs. The trouble is India never finishes the job. At Simla in 1972, with 93,000 Pakistani POWs as leverage, Indira G could have enforced a victor’s peace — and wrenched all of POK including Gilgit Hunza and Baltistan from Pakistan, and formally settled the border on this new line stretching all the way from Gurdaspur to Skardu and points north. But the Indian PM succumbed to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s sweet words and promises.

In Sindoor, taking Haji Pir would have incentivised Islamabad — on the pain of losing more and more of its POK in this manner, to formally accept the new LOC established as the international boundary. And ended the two-front nonsense the Indian military is so preoccupied with that it ignored for five decades the very real China threat until Galwan in 2020 knocked some sense into them — the previous major faceoffs in the Depsang Plains and in Dokla in 2017 apparently ringing no loud alarm bells.

Instead, what’s the scene post-Sindoor? Trump is publicly and playfully contemptuous of Modi, Munir lunches at the White House, the CDS futilely accounts for the Indian aircraft lost on May 7th, and the Defence Secretary, Rajesh Kumar Singh refers to Trump’s invitation to Munir — not Shehbaz Sharif — and the General’s running the show on the other side of the Radcliffe Line — as “an embarrassment” as if that is some great revelation!

Slim Pickings, ain’t it? This when India could have had so much more if only the Indian armed services were more on the ball and geared to grabbing military opportunities on the battlefield by their forelocks, and the Indian leaders had shown more self-respect, held their nerve, and brushed off Trump’s pressure. That, incidentally, would certainly have drawn regard and respect from Trump, who is in awe of strongmen, alpha leaders, who stand up to him. Recall how Kim Jong-un of North Korea tamed him, and Putin has him on a leash. And why he called Munir to the White House and, insultingly as an afterthought, also invited Modi — who thankfully had the good sense to decline. This last was the only good thing the Indian PM did post-Sindoor.

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Compare & contrast: Israeli attacks on Iran & Sindoor

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Israeli PM Netanyahu & IsAF planes on flight line]

US President Donald Trump forbade Israel from striking Iranian nuclear sites. Because he wanted credit for a nuclear deal with Tehran he was in the process of negotiating. Netanyahu told Trump during his April visit — nothing doing, forcing the US government to pullout Americans from the region. In the face of American opposition, Israel unleashed a devastating series of air strikes very early this morning that may not have taken out the deep — half-mile deep underground centrifuge uranium enrichment facility at Fordow in the mountains near Qom, for lack of both the big deep earth penetrator bomb and large bomber aircraft to carry and drop it. US’ nonparticpation meant Israel did not have this combo of decisive weapon and delivery system.

But the strikes may have hit the secondary centrifuge plant at Natanz, other N-installations in Isfahan, ballistic missile factories, and longrange missile batteries as well. Not a country to leave a job half done, separate IsAF sorties decapitated the Iranian nuclear program and military leadership — killing the chief nuclear scientists and engineers and military authority, including Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of Staff of the Iranian defence forces, and Major General Hossein Salami, chief of Pasdaran — Islamic Revolutionary Security Guard. The aerial war is being complemented, moreover, by Mossad activity on the ground inside Iran to neutralise, among other things, Iranian air defence systems, in a combined operation called ‘Rising Lion’. Interestingly. Rising Lion is open-ended with Mossad and IsAF acting in tandem to denature the Iran threat, once and for all.

Switch to Sindoor situation May 10. Air-to-ground strikes with long range missiles fired from Indian airspace — mainly Brahmos and Scalp, had afforded India near complete air dominance with the destruction of the C3 (command, control, communications) hub making coordinated air activity by PAF nearly impossible. The Indian army, at that point, should have pivoted smartly to a land offensive to, at a minimum, capture and reclaim Haji Pir in the disputed territory of Pak-occupied Kashmir. Of course, the Indian army had not prepared for any such “strike and annex” operation — the Indian military never prepares for capitalising on any half-chance offered on the battlefield, and of course it was not nimble enough to mobilise and push with the forces in the Uri, Mandi, Poonch subsectors to take the Salient in Pakistani hands, which has been a thorn in India’s fight against terrorism.

Instead, the next thing we see is the Indian Director General, Military Operations, for no good military reason — unless he was instructed by the Modi government to do so, accepting a Pakistani request for ceasefire! Sure, the fact that the Modi regime reacted so bitterly against Trump’s claiming success for ending this “three day” farce of an India-Pakistan “war”, suggests Prime Minister Modi was indeed arm-twisted into ending hostilities. The US has made no bones about just how close it is to Pakistan and why it is indispensable to American plans for the region. The retiring commander-in-chief, US Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, spelled it out — he praised Pakistan as a “phenomenal” partner in the fight against the Islamic State Khorasan.

The duo of Modi and Jaishankar seem, however, not to be convinced by something Washington daily broadcasts — that Trump is for “America First” and would kick NATO and Asian allies and partners aside if that served his purposes. They really believe India can close in with America and displace Pakistan. What does Kurilla know! So, we witnessed the jaunts at Indian taxpayer’s expense by MPs to faroff points to convince disinterested countries that (1) terrorism is bad, (2) Pakistan is terrorism Central, and (3) that India had won Sindoor! As far as I can make out, these trips, some to Islamic countries, had zero impact — Shashi Tharoor’s mellifluous verbosity, in particular, not making the slightest dent in Washington or New York.

The difference — and the real story here — is that while the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming self-defence, attacked Iran and attacked again, even as Tel Aviv fights with Hamas in Gaza — the classic 2-front situation, and shrugged off US attempts at intervention, Modi gave into Trump without much coaxing and called off Sindoor before it had accomplished anything of note. And this when for Israel, US is a lifeline — for India, only a provider of resident visas for family members of senior GOI and military officers! The poor Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan was left handling the detritus of the Indian government’s buckling under. But, by his own reckoning, was just hitting Pakistani air bases the sole objective of the Operation by which outcome Sindoor is to be judged? That’s what Jaishankar said in Europe! How does it make any military sense to take out Pakistani air defence (SILLACS in Sargodha, etc) and PAF activity, and follow up with doing NOTHING?

It has always been a wonder to me just how quickly the Indian government and establishment folds at the merest hint of US/Western pressure — its own stated policy and the national interest, apparently of no account. This basic weakness at the heart of the Indian system is why India will remain forever — a middling power of little consequence.

It is not just Modi, Indira Gandhi, to remind everybody, was the one who called off — at the very last minute — the Israeli airstrikes in 1982 that were to be staged out of India that I have detailed in my books and in posts on this blog, to bomb Kahuta, and thus taken a nuclearised Pakistan off our concerns. We neither do the job ourselves, nor allow good friends to do it! What we do, however, is pretend and pretend some more about how Great and Good India is, even as a lowly, bankrupt, Pakistan regularly gets up our collective nose.

But, by way of compensating for lack of political will and fortitude to stand up for the national interest, and for genuflecting before Trump, Xi, anybody else, the Indian government keeps denuding the country’s treasury to fund wasteful procurements of useless combat aircraft — more Rafales or F-21s, Su-57s, more this and more that, most of this stuff that the Ukraine War has proved is obsolete, just to give the impression India has a great military — a military that rarely takes the initiative to do anything meaningful on the battlefield, is asked to do nothing meaningful, but merely to look good with new and shiny weaponry!

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Tough Takes on a Tough Neighbourhood — Sindoor Fallout

Posted on June 6, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

This was a June 2, 2025 discussion on Sindoor and its fallout between the two principal discussants hosted by ‘Ignition’ forum under the aegis of the Shiv Nadar Foundation. It may be of interest because Raghavan reflects the MEA’s viewpoint and perspective to a fault! This Ignition event was held at the Westin Hotel in Gurgaon.

[WARNING: I misspoke on the 1965 War — India had 14 DAYS of ammo and spares, when Pakistan was left with only 4-5 days when the ceasefire was called! Sorry about this, it happens in a live discussion!]

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The “48 hours” — is why Munir became a Field Marshal?

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[A properly trim General Asim Munir getting his Field Marshal’s baton from a glum-looking PM, Shebaz Sharif, and an effusively servile, President Asif Ali Zardari — a revealing pic of the investiture ceremony posted by Dr Moeen Pirzada, a Pakistani journalist ]

Some critical bit of information on Op Sindoor has come to hand. The success of the Pakistan Air Force in innovatively using its ex-Chinese JC-10C platform, the PL-15 air-to-air (A2A) longrange missile, and the ex-Swedish Saab 2000 AEWACS (airborne early warning and control system), in bringing down an IAF Rafale outside Bhatinda on May 7, went to Pak army chief General Asim Munir’s head.

Brimming with an excess of confidence, he vaingloriously guaranteed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and senior members of his cabinet that he “would sort out the Indians in 48 hours!” 48 hours!! As promised by Munir, the initiation of his plan for an aerial attack by missiles and drones on important IAF and Indian strategic nodes, was scheduled for 0100 hours May 10.

Unfortunately for Munir, his boastful declaration in Islamabad was picked up by Indian intelligence. And an ambitious counter-plan for a slate of surprise, simultaneous, mass attacks on critical targets was prepared. A combination of Indian fighter aircraft firing Scalp air-to-ground (A2G) missiles and the Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles, and land-based Brahmos went in a little past midnight May 10, and preempted the Pakistani plan. The devastation caused by the Indian attacks spelled the end to Munir’s fanciful strike scheme, resulting in Director General, Military Operations, Pakistan army, Lieutenant General Kashif Abdullah, who had haughtily turned down the Indian DGMO’s offer of ceasefire after Indian missiles had struck Muridke and Bahawalpur on May 7, now called his opposite number Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, waving a white flag.

But, how did this happen?

Because the first wave of missiles destroyed the carefully chosen and strategically crucial target — PAF’s central command, control and communications (C3) centre — the nerve centre of the Pakistan Air Force, housed at the Nur Khan air base in Chaklala, outside Rawalpindi, home also to Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division — the country’s nuclear secretariat. The PAF, it turns out, had no redundant communications setup.

With the entire C3 hub in ruins, the communications links to all the principal PAF air bases hosting combat aircraft, missiles and drones, disappeared as well. These bases were further attrited by the waves of Indian missile and airborne A2G attacks on the bases (Sukkur, Bholari, Jacobabad, et al). The low level air defence SILLACS (Siemens Low Level Air Control System) in Sargodha, it would appear, was separately struck as well.

There was a touch of the usual intra-mural oneupmanship — a feature of all India-Pakistan interactions, in the quiet jubilation at the Indian end, and much satisfaction at Munir and the Pak ‘establishment’ being “sorted out”!

Incidentally, the attack on PAF’s C3 hub at Chaklala collaterally took out a C-130 transporter parked 100 yards away on the tarmac, and the A2G Scalp attack decimated one of the six Saab 2000s parked in the hangar at Bholari. These night time strikes permitted the Pakistanis to clean up the debris at all these stricken airbases before dawn. Two JF-17s may also have been hit.

So, how did the PAF get the Rafale?

The Indian strike sortie comprised the lead Rafale that was to fire its weapon and a buddy Rafale 150 kms to the rear, flying at a higher altitude, and using its radars to scan and surveil the Pakistani airspace to find targets. After finding an appropriate target, the target info was to be transmitted to the lead Rafale for it to engage the enemy. Except, the PAF strike triad, getting inside the IAF sortie’s OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act) Loop, oriented to target and fired before the Rafale pilot could cue to his target. A second can make a world of a difference. That Pak A2A missile brought down the IAF plane.

What is difficult to understand is why the Spectra electronic warfare system on the Rafale failed so miserably in picking up the PAF’s strike triad before the latter homed in for the Rafale kill? Indeed, the Rafale pilot apparently had no reaction time — his radar spotted the incoming PL-15 when the latter was just 50 kms away and moving in fast. 50 kms afforded the IAF pilot just over TWENTY NINE seconds — just enough time to activate his ejection seat and to land safely.

The Spectra EW system in the Rafale was ballyhooed as extremely advanced tech and was supposedly the standout feature of the French aircraft developed by two French companies — Thales and MBDA. But let Wikipedia describe Spectra: “Thales Spectra EW —  Système de Protection et d’Évitement des Conduites de Tir du Rafale (literally: System of Protection and Fire Lines Avoidance of the Rafale) or SPECTRA is a fully internal electronic warfare system jointly developed by Thales Group and MBDA France for the Dassault Rafale. The full SPECTRA integrated electronic warfare suite provides long-range detection, identification and accurate localisation of infrared homing, radio frequency and laser threats. The system incorporates radar warning, laser warning and missile approach warning for threat detection plus a phased array radar jammer and a decoy dispenser for threat countering. It also includes a dedicated management unit for data fusion and reaction decision.” The SPECTRA system also consists of two infrared missile warning sensors. Whew!! Impressive, right?

So, what happened??? Well, SPECTRA did NOT work. And the Indian taxpayer paid Rs 64,000 crores for this junk???.

Munir, in the event, got his Field Marshal’s pips in the main because, after the shooting down of the Rafale, Pakistan impressed every one, and with China and the Chinese media leading the cheering section — JC-10s in the PLAAF, for instance, sported six Rafale decals as kills on the sides of their cockpits (!), and won the military narrative and the regional and international media’s attention. Still, it was for a glaring defeat that Munir becomes Field Marshal?

This is a big IF, but shouldn’t the Indian military have asked Modi to ward off Trump’s pressure for “peace”, and immediately pivoted to a ground offensive to take Haji Pir, and exploited the air superiority achieved by Indian missile strikes by early light, May 10? With Haji Pir in the bag, there would have been no Pakistani pretence of victory, and Munir would have gotten the boot. It would, moreover, have forcefully and permanently rearranged the Pakistan army and government’s thinking about Kashmir, as I had argued when advocating the capture of Haji Pir in my April 30 post. We had large enough forces, including armoured elements, in Uri, Mandi and Poonch to affect such a move.

Did any service chief, any senior military man, alert the Prime Minister the morning of the strikes that such an opportunity had suddenly opened up, and that annexing Haji Pir in POK was at once possible and legally permissible? And, that India need never go back to restoring the status quo ante? I believe not.

This opportunity, alas, may never come again because China will be sure to help plug all the “gaps” revealed by Sindoor in Pakistan’s military capabilities and armed posture

The trouble is the Indian military has never been very nimble and, like the Indian state, can’t seem to walk and chew gum at the same time.

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The Dirge after the Drones: A Post-Mortem of Sindoor

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[PM with his war council]

It is as if the Indian government and its media/commentariat echo chamber, have only now — post-Operation Sindoor and, apparently, for the very first time, discovered that it is a cruel, unforgiving, harshly transactionalist world out there! Not a single friendly leader that Modi hugged and cultivated and, to please whom he bought billions of dollars worth of exorbitantly priced armaments from for the Indian armed forces and rescued their defence industries from insolvency at the expense of the indigenously designed and developed weapons systems and a funds-starved Indian defence industry, returned the favour by standing four-square behind him and India.

Or, offered to join in campaigning internationally to put Pakistan in the dock! The fact is MEA will be hard pressed to collect a political consensus to push Pakistan once again into the ‘Grey List’ of the Financial Action Task Force tracking the funding channels benefitting terrorist gangs. Just for context, at, no time, was Pakistan ever in danger of making the ‘Black List’ — not even at the height of the US-led “Global War on Terror” in the wake of 9/11. Because, that would have permanently damaged Pakistan economically, which the US and Western camp will, under no circumstances, permit.

In the event, other than lending a polite ear, it is unlikely the seven Parliamentary teams sallying forth to the various capitals of the world will be able to convince any country of note — but of what?? That Pakistan harbours/nurses Islamist terrorists? No one doubts that. That India was in the right to strike at Pakistan in retaliation? Who contests that? So, what’s this public relations exercise about, other than affording the selected MPs some time in more salubrious climes?

But let us define the setting.

From the moment the Indian missile attack went in and the Muridke and Bahawalpur targets were hit on May 7, and the latest round of India-Pakistan hostilities was on, the main thing that happened was that Pakistan’s nuclear bluff was called. It proved what I have maintained for over three decades in my books and writings — that Pakistan is in no position to trip a nuclear exchange, and that there was a vast nuclear overhang for India to exploit conventionally. But the Indian government and military — listening to the nonsense of nuclear flashpoint and what not emanating from the US and the West, have stayed their hand and encouraged the Pakistan army to believe it is more powerful than it really is, and that it could freely indulge in costless needling of India.

Still, all any body heard from abroad once Indian missiles hit home, were calls for restraint by New Delhi, but there was zero international political support for the job India had undertaken to suppress Islamist terrorism originating in Pakistan. And this mind you, when New Delhi believed it had a cut and dry case — Pakistan-sponsored terrorists killed Indian tourists in Pahalgam after ascertaining their religious identity, and India retaliated with a view to imposing penalties on the Pakistan army for running the terrorist show.

Restraining India seemed to be the objective of almost all Western countries that Modi had hoped would hurrah him along on his mission to snuff out Islamist terrorism. Foreign minister S Jaishankar’s preparing the diplomatic ground in the interim period between Pahalgam and Sindoor for the Indian military reaction, met with no success, only borderline moralising! It goaded a plainly upset Jaishankar, who saw his diplomatic handiwork of several years of a policy of clever-talking unravel in Europe, to reject such official standoffishness on the Pahalgam issue. India wants “partners, not preachers” he harrumphed, missing out on the delicious irony that not too long ago, it was Modi sagely advising Presidents Vlodomyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin, about this not being “an era for war” — a message fecklessly conveyed also to Israel with Gaza on its hands.

Far from securing any backing from Kyiv and Moscow for Modi and India, now it was New Delhi’s turn to get the mealy-mouthed treatment from everyone in sight! Should we be surprised? Such are the perils of being sanctimonious about war. Not appreciating that war is only another instrument of statecraft and that India, in fact, has used it in the past to advance its interests, can result, as in this instance, in its coming back to bite us in our collective arse! Every country that has had to put up with India’s “moral high ground” pronouncements, is enjoying this moment of India’s discomfiture. If this is not schadenfreude, I don’t know what is.

It raises the bigger question: Why did the Indian government act as if it was entitled to international support, to universal accolades, for attacking terrorist strongholds inside Pakistan? After all, everyone is aware that India always shies away from delivering a decisive blow as it did in Sindoor, that it does not really have what it takes to subdue even a minor foe, what to talk of terrorism. And that India and Modi are more talk than action. This being the case, is India worthy of respect from anybody? Manmohan Singh was far worse — he sat mumbling, and did nothing after 26/11 in 2008.

The lamentations in print and on television — boo hoo! — by the lot of high-strung TV hosts and media commentators about India’s abandonment by the big powers, and the world not really giving a damn about what India was doing or not doing vis a vis Pakistan as long as New Delhi did not escalate matters, mask an unpalatable truth. The international community has about had it with the periodic eruptions in the subcontinent, featuring the same tired cycle of terrorism, blood-curdling rhetoric followed by military actions and reactions with negligible effect that the jingoistic press and media on either side, hyperbolise with unbelievable claims and counter-claims, followed by an abrupt end to hostilities, and a return to the status quo ante, with the original problem remaining largely unaddressed!

How is any of this serious stuff? Because even as a pantomime a 3-day “war” amounts to silliness.

Having taken the offensive, India should have done something hefty as a follow-up to hitting Muridke and Bahawalpur. Like permanently wrenching the Haji Pir Salient and/or Skardu from Pakistan’s grasp, and promising more such territory-grabbing ventures in the future as response to terrorist incidents, until little is left of PoK with Pakistan. Because India did not opt for an intense land war and failed to cut off big slices of Pakistani territory, the Pakistan army gloried in India’s incapacity to do any such thing or even to impose huge costs. It has, in fact, incentivised General Asim Munir to persist with his policy of deploying terrorists in Kashmir — the next terrorist incident is not far round the corner, daring India to do its worst — which GHQ, Rawalpindi, believes it will be able easily to handle as it has done so many times in the past. On the other hand, India’s campaign of taking out the terrorist leaders residing in Pakistan one or two at a time, is obviously not a deterrent enough.

But given its institutional tendency to do everything by half-measures, the Indian government finds itself once again between and betwixt — and in something of a military and political jam. Why?

Firstly, because Trump — with whom, according to foreign minister Jaishankar, Modi has a “personal relationship”, turned rogue and the tables on India. Unbidden, he intervened as a “peace maker”, and decreed an end to the India-Pakistan clash. Such tactics ran into a wall on the Russia-Ukraine Front. With India, predictably, Trump had instant success. Modi buckled under immediately and, just like that, New Delhi accepted a 3rd party — US — role in the affairs of India. And, 30 years of Indian diplomatic effort — a good part of it managed by Jaishankar with the 2008 nuclear deal as its crowning achievement, to de-hyphenate India and Pakistan in the policy matrices of a whole bunch of Western countries New Delhi considers important, went down the drain.

The Modi government tried to wipe the egg off its face for succumbing so easily to the barest American pressure, by futilely challenging the Trump thesis that Modi and Sharif had approached him to mediate — a blatant lie, of course. The MEA pointed out, with chronological referencing, that it was the Pakistan army’s Director General, Military Operations, who called his Indian counterpart on May 9 about a ceasefire, which was not formally accepted until the next day. Even if Trump was irrelevant to the situation, the question is, why was the Pakistani offer of ceasefire accepted at all?

Because even then India could have restored some self-respect by insisting, that its military would stop when New Delhi decided Pakistan had been punished enough, that is after, say, Haji Pir was in Indian hands — however long it took to accomplish that, and that it was not for the US or any third party, without any locus standi in the matter, to dictate anything. The end-state of this to-ing and fro-ing suggests the ceasefire was accepted because of the firman from Trump, which incidentally fits in with the timeline!

The issue then is Trump’s firman to stop firing, which Shehbaz Sharif speedily accepted. Why was it issued when it was? Was it because by May 9, it became clear to Washington, as it did to Munir & Company, that with their amply depleted stock of missiles, if India continued with the pace of missile firings that peaked on May 10, Pakistan would have no option other than to wave the white flag? Indeed, according to Dr Moeen Pirzada, one of the better informed telejournalists, that point of surrender would have been reached by Pakistan by May 12 at the latest. (See https://youtu.be/gLt6MFzLdkQ). If Dr Pirzada had this information, how come RAW or Air Intel/Military Intel did not? And if they did, and had conveyed it to the Modi regime, then things turn darker. But the Indian military’s calling it a day just when the enemy is on the point of giving up, is also part of an old pattern. Recall that India announced a ceasefire in the 1965 War when Pakistan had run down their stocks of spares and stuff to one week’s supply and the Indian military still had 14 days worth left (according to the Indian Official History of that war).

In this context, it is not clear what to make of Rajnath Singh’s statement that the stoppage of hostile actions is just a pause. If this means India suddenly igniting another round, hey, …. we’ll wait and see. For my money, it means nothing — just another emission of hot air.

By May 9, however, the international media line was established by the maddeningly impulsive Trump who, displayed the special brand of viciousness he reserves for his supposed friends. He not only repeated his claim that he had engineered the ceasefire by invitation, but embarrassed Modi some more by doubling down on his revelation that he had used trade as lever to get Modi in line, with nary a mention anywhere of the Pakistani terrorist incident that had sparked the Indian response in the first place, which would have laid the blame for Pahalgam at Islamabad’s door. So, this is the story our circumambulating MPs will try and squelch. Except, these trips are not worth the money being spent, because their arguments will sway no government.

All this is significant only because Modi, now in his 3rd term as PM, has put so much store by intimate relations with America as a means of displacing Pakistan in Washington’s affections and in the US’ security architecture in Asia — a ridiculous venture considering Pakistan, as I keep pointing out, is indispensable to America — its selling points being its comprehensive weakness and manipulability — qualities that Islamabad has, time and again, cashed in on. Until now when it is not the nuclear overhang that saves Pakistan from condign Indian punishment but Washington standing in the way. And India has lacked a strong leader to ward off American pressures.

Does Modi want to make India bend to Washington’s every whim, as Pakistan happily does? Not that the Indian government has not done so repeatedly in the last 30 years, but it will have to become more conspicuously subservient, in the manner Islamabad is. That is how Trump likes it. This is surely not what Modi desires for India.

In that case, Modi has, for starters, to reverse what Piyush Goel, the Commerce Minister, has done by agreeing to all sorts of provisions in the draft Free Trade Agreement with the US inimical to Indian national interest, that is replicating the disastrous FTA he has obtained with the UK, where British companies will be allowed to bid for all Government of India contracts amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and is a deathknell for Indian industry. Modi should simply junk the proposed FTAs with the US, and with its sidekick, UK. And take it from there.

And Modi has to begin straight talking with Trump and without the usual frills. This has so far not happened. May be the PM has to bear the late Henry Kissinger’s warning in mind when dealing with the US, and especially Trump, that to be America’s enemy is dangerous, to be America’s friend is fatal!

Then there’s the Indian military’s performance.

The “three day” war, besides its joining the annals of military absurdity, has brought into question the lead service in Op Sindoor, the Indian Air Force’s competence in air operations. IAF’s coordinated effort with the army to put up an air defence wall against Pakistani missiles, however, was a great success and immensely laudable. In contrast, the radars attached to the Chinese HQ-9 and HQ-16 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) on Pakistan’s side proved a damp squib — they picked up no Indian incoming.  

However, in air ops, it was a different story. In the very first hours of the operation a number of IAF combat aircraft were shot down — the question is: Which aircraft and how many? Pakistan claims downing five Indian fighter planes — 3 Rafales, 1 Su-30 and 1 Mirage 2000. The IAF/GOI have been quiet on this subject, suggesting that the claims may not all be a figment of Fizaya’s imagination. The IAF’s operations in-charge, Air Marshal AK Bharti, cannot brush of such catastrophe as the usual “losses” in war. Rafales were shot down for sure, otherwise the Rafale squadrons would not have been grounded after that first awful day apparently for fear of losing more aircraft.

Much worse, the IAF is so fixated on manned aircraft, it did not foresee the exorbitantly priced French Rafale as a fading asset in the coming age of longrange missiles. And, much, much worse, it did not anticipate how the Pakistan Air Force would innovatively use its Chinese and Swedish assets — the J-10C medium multi-role fighter, its consequential longrange weapon — the Chinese P-15E air-to-air (A2A) missile, and the Saab Erieye AWACS. Why did no one in IAF focus on such use of Chinese assets by PAF? Isn’t it the Air Intelligence’s job — assuming it has any sources in Pakistan independent of other intel agencies, to intimate what the PAF was up to, and for the Ops directorate to factor in this intel for action with adequate countermeasures before sending up the Rafales to do Beyond Visual Range combat, or did everybody really expect that there would be the old style dogfights?

Moreover, high attrition rates seem by now to be an IAF standard — recall the first day of the Kargil conflict — 2 aircraft went down — a helicopter and a Mig-21. And we were told then that, that was because the IAF had not practised combat operations in the mountains! With one of the two live fronts entirely mountainous, what air war actually was the IAF preparing for?! What excuse will Air HQ come up this time around for losing however many high value aircraft in Sindoor. Will they at least show some slight humility, even professionalism, and conclude, albeit belatedly, that Rafale was redundant to need, and that the indigenous Tejas would have done just as well as a weapons carrier — and what matters is the A2A radar-guided Meteor missile. And that, this missile integrated with Tejas would form a more cost-effective combo than the Rafale-Meteor tandem. And if the French missile firm, MBDA, is reluctant to mesh the Meteor with Tejas, France can be told to take their 36 Rafales and shove it. And, in any case, one would expect the IAF to terminate importing this over-hyped plane to meet its so-called Medium Fighter Aircraft requirement, when Tejas is available.

Not sure why the IAF and the Indian government are so squeamish about cornering a supplier country-France/company- Dassault Avions, and demanding they — the sellers — do what we — the buyers, customer — want, and have us routinely take dictation from them, as is the case at present.

If the air chief ACM Amar Preet Singh doesn’t initiate such professionally necessary moves, one hopes there are enough sensible people in the Prime Minister’s Office to put an end to India buying more Rafale for any reason — the least of them to meet the IAF’s extremely questionable medium fighter aircraft requirement. Especially, with the home-made Tejas, also a 4.5 generation fighter aircraft, that will fare better as well in war and can be mass produced by parcelling out big Tejas production contracts, as I have been pleading for years, to private corporations to compel the defence public sector unit — HAL, known mainly for shoddily screwdrivered aircraft to, for the first time, face competition. In a fair competition, HAL will be beaten to a pulp by L&T and/or Tata. (I am not mentioning the Defence Ministry under Rajnath Singh because as defence minister he has revealed himself as too much in thrall to the babus to push anything genuinely strategic for the country.)

And, no, Lockheed’s salivating at replacing Rafale in the IAF fleet with the F-35 with Trump’s help, and the assistance of many serving IAF officers and a load of retired Air Marshals, will hopefully only remain an American dream. Because the F-35, an even more calamitously bad combat aircraft, will be the worst sort of nightmare in Indian service. The IAF’s reputation, already in a dive, will be impossible then to rescue — what to talk of the hit the Indian treasury will take. Modi should tell Trump — No, thankyou, keep the F-35 to yourself. The trouble lies in Modi’s inordinate desire to please America, to be in Trump’s good books, and that’s the joker in the pack.

There are many in the higher reaches of the government and the military, who disrespect Russian military hardware. The effective layered air defence provided by the S-400 must has rattled them a bit. Along with the locally-produced Akash surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), the air wall shut out the Pakistani missiles — reason why Indian airbases and military facilities were not hit in any big way, and not for want of Pakistani forces desperately firing off ordnance at them.

Not too long ago, an insufferable NRI type visiting India — Mukesh Aghi, “President” of some non-government entity called “US-India Strategic Partnership Forum”, declared that India should “play a pivotal role in rebuilding America” and to “Align yourself with what Trump is trying to achieve, which is America First”!!! One can but pray that Aghi’s agenda is NOT Modi’s agenda.

Perhaps, the PMO, MEA and every other agency of the Indian government should hang big boards in their offices saying “AMERICA IS NO ONE’S FRIEND, TRUMP IS NO ONE’S BUDDY” — a line from one of my posts after Trump’s election in November last year. And to craft India’s foreign and military policies accordingly.

A sidebar: Two more interviews that may be of interest: (1) a podcast on ‘Op Sindoor: India signals new war doctrine to Pakistan’ on the May 16, 2025 podcast — ‘The Federal’ conducted by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLUyfOcq640, and (2) an interview by Rashme Sehgal, INTERVIEW: ‘India Should Never Fight Indecisive ‘Wars’ With Pakistan’ published in ‘Newsclick’, May 16, 2025, at https://www.newsclick.in/interview-india-should-never-fight-indecisive-wars-pakistan

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Nuclear aspects of Sindoor, Trump re-hyphenates India-Pakistan, etc: Interview with Rediff

Posted on May 14, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[The PM at the Adampur air base that Pakistan claimed had been destroyed by their missiles]

Rediff.com sent me a slate of questions May 12, 2025 for an email interview. I responded. My original replies reproduced below. A more sanitised version, was published in 2 parts. The first part was published May 13, 2025 — “‘India Missed Opportunity To Take Back Parts Of PoK’ , at https://www.rediff.com/news/interview/operation-sindoor-india-missed-opportunity-to-take-back-parts-of-pok/20250513.htm; and the 2nd part — “China Will Keep Supplying Pakistan Weapons”, at https://www.rediff.com/news/interview/operation-sindoor-china-will-keep-supplying-pakistan-weapons/20250514.htm was published May 14, 2025.

The interview with my original responses:

1) President Trump said a little while ago that ‘We stopped a nuclear conflict. I think it could have been a bad nuclear war. Millions of people could have been killed.’ Were India and Pakistan, in your assessment, truly on the verge of atomic Armageddon last week? Or is it typical Trumpian overstatement? 

A: It is the usual Trumpian hyperbole. The nuclear swords were nowhere near being unsheathed as the US President makes out. It is in his interest, however, to vastly exaggerate his role as ‘peacemaker’, considering he has been frustrated in Ukraine and Gaza, so Op Sindoor was a godsent for him. 

2) CNN reported that US Vice President Vance, Secretary Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Wiles were alerted by intelligence on Friday that compelled the US to get quickly involved in resolving the India-Pakistan crisis after initially shrugging off any involvement. Apparently, the ‘intelligence’ was about an Indian airstrike coming perilously close to breaching one of Pakistan’s nuclear storage sites. Could we have done so  considering both India and Pakistan have a list of each other’s nuclear sites, precisely to avert that dire possibility? 

A: Indian missile attack on Chaklala — HQ Strategic Plans Division — Pakistan’s nuclear secretariat, may have been a wakeup call. But the ops cell of SPD is situated underground which the Indian missile could not have, and was not, designed to penetrate. The message sought to be conveyed to Pakistan was the seriousness of India’s intent. Whether its was so accepted is questionable.

3) If this information to the White House came from the Pakistanis, could it have been truthful? Could it have been classic ISI deception designed to alarm the Americans, get them involved in finding a resolution and get them to persuade the Indians to call a cessation of hostilities especially when Pakistan is in no economic condition to continue a long war?

A: Sure, it is quite possible the Indian attack on Chaklala (and also allegedly on targets in the Kirana Hills where there might be some nuclear testing facilities) was exploited by Islamabad to get the Americans to step in to stop the proceedings. But that is not the reason for the American intercession. The fact is the US cannot afford to let Pakistan go under, or to suffer grievous harm because it is at once the most pliable and the most critical ally in Southwestern Asia which it simply cannot do strategically without. It is this fact of international life Messers Modi, Jaishankar and the MEA seem not to appreciate with their futile attempts to  try and replace Pakistan with India in America’s strategic calculus. Islamabad knows its value, its indispensability, to the US and the West generally and, therefore, keeps pushing the envelope. In the event, if India ever girds up its loins to militarily wrench important areas of POK from Pakistan, it will have to do so in the face of active American opposition. Understand that!

4) Should India have accepted the offer of a ceasefire when its military objectives were incomplete? 

A: No. But then it does not seem the Indian government and the military had any LOC-changing, POK territory-grabbing, objective in mind for Op Sindoor. And a golden opportunity to exercise the option of making a lasting impression on the Pakistan army was lost. More so because Pakistan had opened the doors for Indian actions to grab vital pieces of POK when Islamabad announced it had “suspended” the 1972 Shimla Accord, which legitimised that ceasefire line — the LOC as virtually a boundary. The chance was thus missed to rationalise, i.e., to straighten, the LOC as I had advocated in my ‘Security Wise’ Blog of April 30, by capturing the Haji Pir Bulge at one end, and even Skardu at the other end to link up with the Indian control of the Saltoro Muztagh to the Siachin Glacier. 

The short point is, a military operation has to impact an adversary’s thinking and mindset in the manner desired. Had Haji Pir and/or Skardu been taken, the message would have gone out not just to General Asim Munir and his cohort in the Pakistan army but to the Pakistani people that every terrorist incident in India would lead to substantial loss of territory in POK. This would have proved a powerful motivation for GHQ, Rawalpindi, to give up its use of terrorism as a successful tool of asymmetric warfare against India. 

5) Do you think India had no option but to accept the ceasefire because the government would not want to displease Mr Trump?

A: Have never understood the tendency of the Indian government, whether under Manmohan Singh and now Narendra Modi, to bend its knees to Washington. It is, by now, a reflex Indian policy. Think of the leverages India has that the government does not use. Its geostrategic location and resources. Without India’s help and assistance the US policy of containing China in the Indian Ocean with India’s position astride it, and in Central Asia with its geographic reach to the north, is null and voided. And what about the “access to the Indian market” economic leverage? No economy, not the American, not the Chinese, can do without selling to India, peddling their wares to Indians. The government scrupulously avoids using it against the US and China, or in the context of the Free Trade Agreements being negotiated left and right. It is hardly a surprise that India, far from getting respect, has a  burgeoning reputation for its timidity and for being a sucker.

6) Or was a ceasefire okay with the government and military because 1. We had achieved militarily more than what we set out to especially during days two and three of the conflict, and 2. Because the nightly drone attacks from Pakistan had scared and unnerved the unprepared-for this population in north Indian cities? 

A: Of course, the Indian people have no experience of war, are easily rattled, and are jingoistic only upto the point nothing happens in a crisis! If this is a given, surely, the government would have factored this aspect into its calculations before embarking on the punitive drone and missile strike mission. And what great results have been achieved with these hits on Pakistani targets, pray? Indeed, if anything, the damage is so easily repairable, the Pakistani government, army and people are already celebrating the ending of the 3-day “war” as a great win for Pakistan! If anything Sindoor has led to elation in Pakistan as to how well its military handled India.

7) As one of India’s premier national security experts, what is your assessment of Operation Sindoor?


A: Sindoor served as a symbolic gesture more than it achieved a substantive aim. What, after all, was the purpose of the minimal military actions we saw unfolding in realtime? It is  not at all clear. Will it prove a deterrent for the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from mounting terrorist actions in the future in J&K and elsewhere? Of course not, especially with the restoration, for all intents and purposes, of the status quo ante. So, what was it all about? Sure, as I suggested in my Blog post of May 7, a psychological barrier has been breached with the strikes on the campuses of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in Muridke and of the Jaish-e-Mohammad in Bahawalpur. But the effect should not be overstated. Because the Pakistani authorities had vacated both areas of people the day before the Indian missiles struck, suggesting the Pakistan army had intelligence on the incoming Indian attacks.  Still, strikes on Pakistan’s Punjabi heartland  is a threshold crossed. 

8) By striking a wide number of terrorist targets in the first round on Tuesday night and military airfields in consecutive rounds on Wednesday night/Thursday night, did we inflict enough punishment on the ISI and the Pakistan army for the horrific Pahalgam attack?

A: No. Sindoor has caused some deaths and material losses, true. But the destroyed physical facilities can be quickly rebuilt, And youth schooled in little else but Koran in extremist-run madrassahs provide a steady and unending supply of jihadis and mujahideen. So net result: Sindoor will make no difference whatsoever to Pakistan’s attitude to Kashmir or to use of Islamist terrorism.


 9) What surprised you most about Operation Sindoor?

A: I was surprised by just how restrained the Indian military effort actually was in contrast to the rhetoric following the Pahalgam massacre on April 22, when Modi talked of “unimaginable consequences”. So were any of the Indian strikes during Sindoor unimaginable? I was astonished, as well, that the government and the military did not prepare for swift and telling actions to oust the Pakistanis, at least, from the Haji Pir Salient that offers the ISI with the main infiltration routes into the Srinagar Valley from south of the Pir Panjal Range. One would have thought the time lag between Pahalgam and Sindoor would be used to get the forces ready for capturing Haji Pir. It was captured by 1 Para in the 1965 War only to be returned at the Tashkant talks in exchange for Chhamb that the Indian army lost. (Except, Chhamb was lost again to the Pakistan army in 1971, this time for good.)    

10)  Did any aspect of Operation Sindoor disappoint you?

A: Absolutely everything except the symbolic hits on Muridke and Bahawalpur, for the reasons detailed above.

11) Do you believe Marc Rubio’s assertion that India agreed to discuss all issues with Pakistan at a neutral venue? Would External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, who Rubio interacted with, given the Americans such an assurance? Has the Trump administration restored the hyphen with Pakistan that vexed India’s leaders and diplomats for years?

A: There’s some confusion about what it is the Jaishankar-Ajit Doval duo agreed with the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on. According to retired dipomats, who may or may not be plugged into the official loop, that “neutral site” was accepted on ambiguous terms. That does not detract from the fact that New Delhi wilted  under American pressure.  Whatever the truth, the fact that the Modi regime accepted the US as an intermediary establishes a bad precedent that Pakistan will capitalise on in the future both because it formally defines America as an enforcer against India, and because it re-hyphenates India and Pakistan — a giveaway which is a manifest diplomatic disaster. One had hoped that South Asia had left behind the hyphenation phase for good.


12)  In a sense, does this conflict redefine war, when adversaries don’t cross their territory, but hurl swarms of drones and missiles at each other? Can such a stratagem be limited in its duration and geographical spread?

A: Yes, in fact, this is medium-term future war in embryo. Weapons with lethality and range will be more important than platforms, like combat aircraft. This future will transition soon to Artificial Intelligence-driven autonomous weapons systems slaved to fused information dissemination systems aided by quantum computing with the ability to surveil and prioritise target sets, in effect, to war solely by machines. Such wars were first imagined by HG Wells in his 1898 book — the War of the Worlds!  Except, Wells’ adversary were Martians invading the earth! 


13) Do you believe India achieved its objective — of punishing the terrorists and their sponsors — this time more than it did in 2016 (the surgical strikes) and in 2019 (the Balakot air strikes)? Unlike those two military events where evidence was rather inconclusive and sparse, there is enough photographic and video evidence this time to satisfy sceptics. 


A: With the hysterical TV, press and social media coverage, where are the skeptics? The few of us, saying “Hang on! Look at the evidence” are drowned out. Not sure what great effect the 2016 response to the Pathankot attack, had. Further, as analysed in my wriings, the 2019 Balakot operation was a sheer failure with the Israeli SPICE 2000 GPS-guided bombs overshooting the target, and a farce even, with the IAF MiG-21 pilot, Abhinandan, captured the next day, returned, and given a gallantry award for getting shot down!   

14) Will such forceful military action get the terrorists and their sponsors in the ISI and Pakistan army to end their campaign of murder and mayhem? Or is that highly unlikely given that using terror to hurt India is a long established Pakistan military doctrine and not one the ISI/Pakistani army will renege from no matter what India’s actions? The terrorists may lie low for a while before resuming their sinister campaigns.

A: Pakistan lost nothing in Sindoor for its army to change its mind about the utility of terrorism as an asymmetric weapon to keep the Indian government and military unsettled. Why would they give it up?

15)  Prime Minister Modi just declared that future terrorist attacks will be dealt with militarily, like the one we saw last week. This seems like a directive from the Mossad stylesheet. But Israel bombing weakened neighbours is very different from India taking on Pakistan each time — God forbid — terrorists strike in the Kashmir Valley, especially as some Indian defence observers have pointed out there is near parity between the two militaries. Is this new ‘doctrine unrealistic with the possibility of continued and sustained actual military confrontation like we have not seen and the possibility of this going off message in an extremely dangerous way?

A: Please don’t compare Modi’s list to Mossad’s modus operandi, which is nothing as catholic! Israelis never leave anything they start half done. 

16) Since the ISI and the Pakistan army won’t call off their beasts, what options does India have to prevent horrific acts of terror like Pahalgam 22/4?

A: If the Indian government won’t use the incidence of Pakistani sponsored terrorism to territorially diminish POK, there is no disincentive whatsoever to ISI to divert from its strategy that has pushed India to the wall.

17) What has been the fallout of Operation Sindoor in Pakistan in your opinion? This entire episode, beginning with the Pahalgam attack, was seen by Pakistan-watchers as a gambit by Asim Munir to shore up his own and the army’s battered-by-Imran Khan image? That the Pakistanis would once again see Munir and the army as the only guardians of national interest, able to protect them, against India. Has that illusion been shattered by India’s deep strikes into Pakistani territory? Why do you think the Pakistan military failed to thwart India’s attacks?

A: Whatever the other fallout, the Pakistani military, surely, would worry about just how porus and ineffective its air defence systems proved in preventing Indian drone and missile salvo firings. Otherwise, the Op Sindoor worked out according to their script!

18) What about the Chinese presence in this 72-hour war? Beyond the anodyne statements asking India and Pakistan to observe restraint, was China a not visible participant in this conflict by transmitting satellite-conveyed observational intelligence to GHQ Rawalpindi and, of course, by pitting Pakistan’s Chinese weapons against India’s Western origin armaments. 

A: China visibly gloated — did anybody notice the self-satified smirk on the face of the Chinese government spokesman when he advised retraint? Its client, the Pakistan Air Force, in particular, professionally combined its Swedish Saab Erieye AWACS to spot IAF aircraft as targets in Indian airspace, the small numbers of the Chinese J-10C fighters armed with the apparently deadly Chinese long range PL-15E air-to-air missile (A2A), flying in passive mode until cued to the target by Erieye, and firing on Indian aircraft for very good effect. There was no comparable IAF performance. Indeed, after the first day the Rafale was grounded along with its much touted Meteor A2A missile with the supposedly largest kill-cone of any A2As of some 65 degrees. This grounding suggests a Rafale was shot down by a Pakistani PL-15 over (Bhatinda? in) Indian territory, and why the IAF did not want to risk another such Pakistani hit.

19) What does the almost direct Chinese involvement in the 72-hour war augur for future conflicts with India? Could the Indian Army confront a two front situation in the future, and how could we overcome it?

A: The lesson Beijing would have learned is that there is, cost-benefit wise, no better option than to keep the Pakistan military supplied copiously with its most advanced armaments, certain that in hostilities with India these would be used for maximum effect. And that this, in turn, would burnish the image and reputation of Chinese-built military hardware in the exponentially growing international arms bazaar and increase its arms exports, besides showing up India and its military as not even the equal of Pakistan.

20) Was the rapprochement of October 2024 with the Chinese a mistake? Why did we reach out to the Chinese after four years of asserting how badly the India-China relationship was? What, in your assessment, was the reason for this? Was it the uncertainty of dealing with the Trump administration that led us to this folly?

A: Prime Minister Modi and the external affairs minister Jaishankar should answer this. Sure, in Trump’s world it is good for India to have relations with China as policy leverage. But considering that the status quo ante on the disputed border with China as of 2020 has not been restored and China has made no concessions elewhere, such as in trade and investments and, on the other hand, Trump has time and again succeeded in making Modi look like a chump who can be pressured into doing whatever Washington wants, including buying, as is strongly rumoured, military hardware including the hopelessly bad F-35 “so-called 5th gen” warplane. The fact is whatever the policy the Indian government is pursuing is not working. How much more evidence do they need?

21)  60 years ago, Britain negotiated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after repeated skirmishes in the Kutch. A couple of months later, India and Pakistan fought a brutal war. Could we see a replay this year, especially with an ambitious and unpredictable general at the helm of Pakistan’s army? Will Pakistan use this pause in battle to rebuild its arsenal with Chinese help and perhaps some part of the billion dollar loan that the IMF had just given Islamabad (who is to know, right?)?

A: Look, it is clear the $1.3 billion IMF loan was the means to influence Islamabad into accepting the termination of Sindoor. There’s another $7.4 billion tranche of credit awaiting clearance. So, GHQ, Rawalpindi, will do nothing until that second lot of money is in their hands before letting the ISI allow the LeT/JeM cadres, now grouped under ‘The Resistance Front’, to once again launch terrorist acts in J&K, and possibly elsewhere in India. If Modi is to be taken at his word, this will mean many more Sindoors, hopefully, with different results!

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Op Sindoor, misuse of the defence rupee, how to become atmnirbhar in armaments

Posted on May 12, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

संवाद # 250: India MUST’ve punished Pak by taking back Skardu, Haji Pir sailent | Bharat Karnad

A bunch of issues tackled in the Vaad podcast; may be of interest to ‘Security Wise’ followers, taped 3 days ago

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Rafale failed in Sindoor! Rethink this French option for MFA

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[A grounded Tejas vs a flying Rafale!]

The usual, unsatisfactory, inconclusive end to Sindoor. And that too inside of three days of start of military operations! What is equally surprising is how quickly we accepted US mediation, unless the entire Op Sindoor was planned on the basis that after a few days of slinging things around in which the Indian military would be permitted to do as much damage to the Pakistan military as possible, the US would step in with the arm twister of IMF credit of $1.3 billion, to bring Islamabad in line.

In the Deccani Hindustani lingo of my childhood in Dharwad, the Op Sindoor was all padenga, padenga, phoos!

The public rhetoric of our leaders in the aftermath of the April 22 Pahalgam massacre promised something very big — recall Prime Minister Narendra Modi talking of “unimaginable” consequences for Pakistan. So were small time exchanges of drone and missile strikes for three days unimaginable?!! There were NO plans to take the Haji Pir Salient or Skardu in the Northern Areas, or to do anything remotely aggressive other than striking Muridke and Bahawalpur — which broke through the system of self-inhibition, the “psychological factor” that I referred to in the previous post, and showed some political will, established a precedent, and injected a bit of credibility into the Indian threat to treat any and every terrorist incident hereafter as casus belli, “cause for war”. This was fine, but not good enough.

In the main, Sindoor revealed the Indian Air Force’s flawed assessment of technology and trends. Its showboat Rafale combat aircraft came a cropper. Based on news stories in CNN (https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/09/china/china-military-tech-pakistan-india-conflict-intl-hnk), Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/pakistans-chinese-made-jet-brought-down-two-indian-fighter-aircraft-us-officials-2025-05-08/) and The Telegraph of London (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/9caaf214c46509a7), featuring Pakistani claims and US sources supporting such claims (of as many as 5 IAF aircraft downed — 2 Rafales, 1 Su-30, 2 Mirage 2000s), a former military person, sent in his take on the IAF-PAF tussle in Sindoor which is worth quoting (it is almost in blank verse!):

“Saab Erieye AWACS patrolling silently
J-10C fighters flying in passive mode
PL-15E missiles—the export PL-15E, the domestic variant with over 300 km reach and Mach 5 speed—locked in and fired
The Rafale didn’t even know it was targeted until the missile was 50 km away. At that speed, the Indian pilot had 9 seconds. Not enough to react. Not enough to survive.”

The IAF presence over J&K was sparse in 2 of the 3 days. Why?

“Because every time a fighter lifts off, Pakistani radars pick it up.
Because the Erieye sees what Indian radars can’t.
Because the PL-15 launches from outside Rafale’s threat envelope.
Because the Rafale, once India’s silver bullet, has been turned into a $250 million sitting duck.The IAF now flies 300 km behind its own borders.”

It’d be only right to note that while a spendthrift IAF invested in prohibitively priced weapons platforms, like the Rafale, the PAF invested in the “kill chain” inclusive of a few J-10Cs, Saab AWACS and mostly long range A2A ordnance. (With respect to the Rafale refer https://www.epw.in/journal/2024/41/perspectives/strategic-autonomy-national-security.html.) Recall how the Rafale was ballyhooed by Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, CAS at the time of the failed 2019 Balakot strike who, not too long ago rued the fact that he did not have the Rafale for that action.

A highly regarded retired Air Marshal reminded me not to take the stories of US support for PAF’s claims for the IAF Rafales downed except with the greatest skepticism. Absolutely true that the US defence companies are mighty keen to have the Trump Admin push the far more useless and expensive F-35 on Modi’s India and IAF. Even with that caution in mind, PAF’s choices in expenditure are still commendable.

Also because, the PAF has initiated a new method of air warfare with an adjoining country — combat aircraft staying well back in their own air space, firing longrange air-to-air (A2A) and air-to-ground (A2G) weapons with exceptional support. Except, Rafales cost $250 million each. The fleet of 36 is now depleted. This is of larger consequence than the damage done by Indian missiles to frontline Pakistani airstrips and air defence systems. Sindoor has definitively proved that Rafale is an overhyped combat aircraft.

If all the IAF meant to use the exorbitantly priced Rafale for was as a standoff weapons platform, then wouldn’t the Tejas, as I have always been advocating, been as good an aircraft to trigger longrange A2A and A2G missiles, at a fraction of the cost? Will the Indian Ministry of Defence and the Modi PMO even at this late date not rethink the Rafale deal that is in the works to meet IAF’s spurious medium fighter aircraft requirement for nearly 100 Rafales to cost additional thousands of billions of US dollars in hard currency? And will the IAF at least now do the nationalistic thing, save the country a treasure trove of hard currency, and save its flagging reputation, and finally throw off its yoke of imported aircraft and opt for the Tejas instead??? More will be be revealed about the Rafale in the Sindoor ops in the days to come. Time for the IAF, for its own good, to begin distancing itself from this aircraft. (There are very good reasons why no other other major air force opted for this aircraft as my innumerable posts on the Rafale in this blog, suggest.)

Within hours of the announcement of the ceasefire this evening, the Pakistan army frontline units on the LOC opened up with artillery in the Poonch and Rajouri sectors of J&K. This is the Pakistan army the Indian government expects to be actually deterred by the Indian military threat of striking the Punjab heartland, especially in the wake of India being militarily in good condition to capture Pakistani territory in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, but did not? And, this is the Pakistan army that is expected to foreswear terrorism as a tool of asymmetric warfare that has had the Indian army on edge in Kashmir for the last two decades? Well, Good Luck! (Even without the Koran-spouting General Asim Munir, who might become the first big Pakistani casualty.)

The Indian government and military seem to be so caught up in the cycle of petty military actions and outcomes, apparently forgetting Modi’s and defence minister Rajnath Singh’s exhortation to the nation to “Think Big, Act Big!”

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