[Trump and the late Senator Lindsey Graham]
Two good things happened in the last few days. Trump re-started the Hormuz war, and handed all countries, lucky enough geographically to have some nearby “straits” to potentially lord over, to chuckle at the US annointing itself the “Guardian of Hormuz” and setting a precedent for them to follow in future crises in their waterway by imposing a blockade and a toll of 20% on all traffic and trade passing through it to meet, Trump said, the policing expenses.
And secondly, just like that, Senator Lindsey Graham, who had likened Trump’s presidential candidacy to “a shot in the head” for the Republican Party but since then had turned into the president’s poodle, up and died (of a cardiac arrest, or some thing) over the weekend. The scene was thus instantly vacated of an American politician who was growingly a pain in India’s neck! Most recently, he had taken to screaming for 500% tariffs on all Indian exports to America! May be he just had a bad meal at the Indian ambassador’s, who knows! More likely as a supposed Trump whisperer, Graham displayed the animus to please Donald, who post-Sindoor, pivoted markedly towards Asim Munir marshalling the Pakistani field to enrich the Trump Family.
Hope somebody in government, starting with the external affairs minister S Jaishankar is taking notes because we have three critical straits — Malacca, Lombok and Sunda to harrass China’s energy and other trade flowing through them. Applying the choke on Lombok and Sunda has become more doable after the PM’s trip to Indonesia that formalised Indian development of the Sabang port into a naval base for joint use. Some in MEA rued the fact that it was Sabang on Sumatra’s northwestern tip that had been made available rather than an inlet on the eastern end of Java or a location on Sulawesi (Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi being three main islands of that archipelagic nation), either of the latter two would have provided an opening on the South China Sea. A former ambassador to Indonesia told me that Delhi, as usual, was simply not thinking strategically and did not press Jakarta on the Java and Sulawesi options.
As it is, PLA Navy (PLAN) is reconciled to the Indian naval “steel curtain” coming down on the Malacca Strait, leaving it just the Lombok and Sunda openings to the Indian Ocean to negotiate. If these two “narrow seas” too come under stress, PLAN activity India-wards would be restricted, if not negated. This then should be the larger military objective. The more immediate concern, as I have been iterating over the past three plus decades is for India to establish a forward armed presence in China’s backyard by having Indian naval and air force elements on permanent station east of Malacca on both the littoral and archipelagic sides of the South China Sea. Meaning on Nha Trang on the central Vietnam coast and in Subic Bay and Clark’s air force base in the Philippines. Nha Trang has long been offered by Hanoi for India to exploit. And Manila would be only too happy to have Indian warships anchor at Subic and an IAF Su-30MKI squadron or two at Clark’s in support, what with the Brahmos cruise missiles already in its employ which can, if Manila is pushed, sink big PLAN ships. A brace each for the carriers Liaoning, Shandong, and Fujian, perhaps!
Such a military setup will be the only apt counter to China cementing its hold on Gwadar (under the pretext of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) and more recently in Mongla port in Bangladesh that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party of Tariq Rahman handed over to China to run, thanks to the Indian government failing to develop the port along the lines its was committed to doing. So much for Modi’s priority “neighbourhood first” policy! We have no friendly neighbours (Bhutan doesn’t count)!
The pity is not that political agreements for basing such naval and air forces in Southeast Asia are not feasible. But that the Indian government and Navy (and the military, generally) still think defensively in terms of tackling PLA, PLAAF, and PLAN only when it seeks to force an entry into the Indian Ocean which, given the Chinese navy’s size and surge capacity, may be too late.
It is in the context of chokepoints, that the MEA, unsurprisingly, rather than NOT reacting at all to renewed hostilities in the Gulf which’d have been the wise thing to do, bleated mournfully about the principle of freedom of navigation being violated. One thing the country needs less of is Delhi’s Pollyanna-ish sobbing over the imperilling of the liberal order (that freedom of navigation represents), something an ill-advised Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, too indulged in yesterday when condoling an Indian crewman’s death in an Iran missile strike on a passing tanker. What the Modi regime needs to note are the precedents being set by the US and Iran in the Hormuz Strait with respect to imposing a blockade and extracting a toll, and to gird up its loins to do the same when opportunity presents itself against China!
Geography is not just destiny, it is also good strategy and the sooner the Modi regime understands the strategic value of the chokepoints — India has six in its vicinity, other than the ones to the east, the Palk Strait, Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb on the Red Sea (that the Houthis in sympathy with Tehran have now closed off), and how, when, and why to close them, the better. As the main country centered on the Indian Ocean and astride it, India’s goal and attitude ought to be that it is India’s Ocean — not the Indian Ocean, which the Chinese strategists seek to remind Delhi that it is. It is precisely Modi’s fear of military escalation that Beijing time and again has capitalised on since Doklam and Galwan to keep India on the defensive. This state of affairs cannot, and should not, be allowed to continue.
Time India and the Indian Navy came out of Beijing’s shadow, took the initiative and the fight to China. Because, as the academia, commentariat, and media are finally beginning to appreciate, that the US is not to be trusted as strategic partner, least of all to fight India’s fight.
Security Wise 
We need to box China In , not just in its soft underbelly of south east asia by weaponising the eastern straits of the Indian ocean and deploying military assests in the south china sea but by also having military bases in the central asia with possibility of defence production of indian tanks ,missiles etc . Of course Russian are present to the north and with Japan and South Korea closing in on its Eastern Flank.
Just like that Gen. P.S. Bhagat’s Idea of Ring of States around China gets realised !!
If india is to be a great power we should act as one.(build economic technology military power and make countries pay price if any little harm is done to to bharat ganarajya and its interests.)Hence I don’t see why we have to be consistent regarding policy. Has us been consistent about terrorism? But what price have we made the US pay?
but we should immediately start mass producing brahmos missiles and our 1500 km Lrashm hypersonic missile. That is more. urgently needed.
but regarding japan should we cooperate with japanese now or wait till us forces leave japan and japan gets nuclear weapon? What is your opinion?
Dr Karnad, Another thoughtful article from your mighty pen. However , can the port in Indonesia for which MoU was signed could go the way of the Mongla port in Bangladesh ?
Unlikely
Mr. Karnad
On YouTube, some retired american conservative government officers and politicians are arguing that Israel for it’s own geopolitical goals is making trouble in middle east and dragging America in these forever wars. Ex-cia officer John kiriakou has said in multiple interviews that cia has put mossad under highest level of threat to national security. He also said that mossad actively recruit americans from cia, government and defense industries to make them mossad assets.
Is Israel is also using India to finish the potential nuclear danger from Pakistan by indirectly trying to start a war between india and Pakistan to finish Pakistan with india also having collateral damage ?
Is mossad is penetrating into RAW and indian government and media ecosystem to achieve it’s own goal ?
I think we are dangerously close to such a country which don’t care about anything and which even cheats it closest friend america.
America is nobody’s friend. Unlike India, Israel is a hard national security state that takes no chances.
A question to everyone on the forum. Has India offered Brahmos Missiles to Taiwan?
Taiwan faces Bullying from China on a daily basis still they are an independent nation. This makes them a very resilient country.
Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines none of them will ever confront China militarily.
Taiwan has powerful missiles to hit Beijing
A lacunae in your otherwise estimable analysis is the knotty issue of undersea cables. India’s vulnerability to this means that China’s greyzone tactic can readily render India’s entire profitable albeit Digital Coolie industry dead in the water, pun intended
Yes, it is a security vulnerability and India will need to deploy undersea surveillance systems to ensure there is no disruption, and to even prevent it
Greetings professor.
A shock and awe campaign first which backfired, a formality of a blockade, a negotiation which failed and now a proper SEAD & DEAD operation along the straits. Not just that. Americans just hit Bushner and Bampur which hold mechanised infantry and armoured vehicles.
So, I have two questions sir.
Thanks and regards,
Jai Hind!!
Taking Kharg will require ground forces to hold it, and fix the US presence, making it easier for the Pasdaran to attack them at will, and draw America into an inescapable quagmire. Strangely, this is recommended by some US Generals despite the sobering Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan experiences. Caspian Sea attacks will bring in Russia — Trump doesn’t want that
Professor Robert Pape argues that is the because:
THUS my question on the Caspian sea. Russia and China are actively helping out Iran as pointed out by you in the earlier posts as well so, might as well cease the initiative and finish it off before it spirals to, i dont know, the ‘Herbert Hoover’ moment for the POTUS which he so wishes to avoid.
Anyway. Your thoughts sir?
Trump is not a serious President, and will take the first exit out.
Other than Iran, what other Islamic countries are there in the “Islamic” bloc? No critical mass, no conflict!
Professor
I had understanding that you pointed towards post-state, decentralized weaponization of cultural identity in Islam.
With Mojtaba Khamenei’s recent call for crowdsourced retaliation, this is scaling globally. He explicitly declared that “freedom-seekers across the world will each carry out part of this divine mission”. they published a list
The IRGC Quds Force is abandoning traditional proxy militias for a flattened architecture, relying instead on lone-actor mobilization and disposable agents to target Americans and Western interests[eg.; new terror cells in iraq,recon cells in uae,bahrain]
Enabled by tech maturity, this open-source Islamic terrorism will spread worldwide.
Enabled by tech maturity, this open-source terrorism will spread worldwide. We can already see the baby steps: the November 2025 Delhi bombing revealed a sophisticated, self-funded “white collar terror ecosystem” operating completely off traditional grids.
As target selection and algorithmic radicalization are refined, we will see shorter attack timelines and untraceable global mobilization.
What’s the point of state actors when we can move towards mobilising the community , the path of jihad remains integral to Islamic path.
I felt you writing were directed towrds this post-state, community driven efforts as Hardliners are symbiotic in growth feeding of each other’s hate to grow, be it Christian or Hindu Radicalistion growing in respoinse to Islamic Radicalisation.
Thus, I assume in next 4years we will see this decentralised conflict, as islamic jihad never dies it just hibernates and pivot to come back
things to consider for ground invasion:
gathering area: now its very easy to spot large convoy gathering via satellites and other means from the Russkies and Han race and the Persians would wipe the crusader troops off with long rage fire.
lets say out of utter frustration nuclear weapons are used against the Persians, would the anglo saxon and Europeans be able to stomach the potential nuclear retaliation from Persia against their fellow Caucasian cousins in the Jewish lands. the risk of Persia bringing on a surprise declaration of nuclear weapons is quite high.
that’s the reason the Persians are attacking Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain to clear the missile corridor towards the Jewish lands.
the orange man may huff and puff with a hint of saliva jumping out his mouth but he can do little else other than doing some symbolic attack on civilian infrastructure and walking away declaring victory on the fox news
Greetings friend,
However, the military movement along the strait and the bombing patter show a different story.
US 82nd airbourne have started rehearsals. The naval assets are still in intact and in fact, Americans are now using kamikaze style UMVs to disable coastal counter offensive capabilities of Iran along the strait. This alone is not the worrying point.
Their strikes on Bampur, Qeshm, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Sirik etc is evidence that they are going after Iranian ground logistics. Now why would you do that if the goal is a limited, intimidation air strike operation when you know it failed.
Americans have also attacked Iranian railway lines which connect it to China, Russia and CAR.
In return, Iranians have attacked infrastructure of GCC and have positioned the Houthis to take control of bab-el-mandeb. Armed Hezbollah with FPV drones to possibly deny Israeli shipment and cargo along the dead sea, red sea and the levant!!
I hope you are right but, this seems serious to me. Just a thought. Hope you don’t mind me contributing to your insight.
Jai Hind!
All this geo-strat stuff won’t work if the economy tanks.
With a massive working-age population toiling in a gig economy, the economy is walking towards a pension crisis. India doesn’t have a state supported pension system that can withstand a 5-point drop in the GDP. Urgent reforms are needed to create a long-term economic cushion.
Without an economy, forget the Malacca strait. You’d be hard pressed to hold on to the Andaman & Nicobar islands.
They are destroying and India is supporting their economy.
Best way to defeat India’s enemy is stop/restrict import. Instead of opening trade routes after operation sindoor, they should have done more restrictions.
But, they say to fool and fool gets fooled.
Professor,
Two quotes of patton for this piece
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”
“The tactics belong to battalion commanders. If generals knew less tactics, they would interfereless.”
Advocating for Mahanian naval blockades and physical garrisons at Subic Bay is 20th-century nostalgia. You are proposing a logistical trap in an era of decentralized warfare. The modern ‘choke’ isn’t a frigate acting as a toll booth in the Malacca; it is autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) swarms, seabed sensor networks, fast-paced missile boats, and blinding the PLAN’s C4ISR satellite uplinks before they ever reach the Sunda Strait.
True ingenuity means we stop prescribing static, predictable fleet deployments and start dominating the domains China actually fears: space, cyber, and autonomous deterrence.
Just look at the asymmetric reality of the Gulf: the IRGC Navy, operating under a decentralized ‘mosaic doctrine,’ has sustained Offensive leverage over the course of the war even with extensive damage, whereas the traditional Iranian Navy’s conventional methodology leaves their platforms as sitting ducks and out of war.
We need a maritime mosaic doctrine for the Indo-Pacific, not floating targets.
The new age of drone warfare in no way negates presence — that’s the essence of Wei Qi, the Chinese game of strategy of filling the map, leaving the adversary no space to manoeuvre. China is in Gwadar, Humbantota, and now Mongla. Do you see the point? And, in any case, spreading presence and new AI-driven drone warfare are not mutually exclusive and that’s the game. It is not either/or.
Greetings Professor,
I am definitely not against containing China, but simply mirroring their development trajectory is a losing game for us.
The PLAN doctrine of Tixi Poji Zhan or System Destruction Warfare focuses entirely on blinding the enemy and forcing an operational collapse.
This strategy will not even give us the chance to deploy conventional platforms, let alone execute a physical blockade.
Look at their presence in the Indian Ocean. Their cabbage strategy using the maritime militia and Coast Guard is essentially a Wei Qi game (as you noted)to keep conflicts below the conventional threshold while exhausting our logistics.
Spending our limited resources to mirror this is walking straight into a resource black hole. We must combat this slow encroachment and their fast paced systemic strikes not by copying them, but by completely invalidating their approach.
With respect, your suggestion of stationing Su 30s, building distant naval bases, and parking frigates in the Sunda Strait creates exactly that kind of resource exhaustive trap. It is like attempting to fight a 21st century decentralized adversary using 20th century centralized fortresses.
India needs to move toward Asymmetric Network Paralysis and Distributed Friction. We should not try to fill the map like they do. Instead we should make the expanded Chinese footprint entirely unusable during a conflict.
Here is how I see this working in practice.
First we need cognitive and kinetic blinding.
The Chinese military machine relies heavily on centralized data networks to coordinate its lethal long range missile strikes and drone swarms.
Instead of blowing funds on an additional aircraft carrier, we should funnel those resources into multi domain offensive cyber, electronic warfare, and counter space capabilities. The goal is not to hit a Chinese cruiser with a missile, but to sever its C4ISR links. A carrier without data is just a floating piece of metal.
Second, regarding the chokepoints, building static bases invites pre emptive missile destruction
We should turn the Andaman and Nicobar Islands into a highly dispersed unsinkable launchpad. If we deploy deep sea acoustic arrays, mobile anti ship missile batteries, and swarms of long endurance AUVs and UAVs, we create a permanent low cost tripwire across the region that cannot be wiped out by a single strike.
Third, we need to puncture their Wei Qi network.
We have to accept China peacetime presence in Gwadar, Hambantota, and Mongla. But in wartime, these bases become highly vulnerable isolated enclaves.
We should develop hyper local deniable and unconventional disruption capabilities using cyber and special forces to instantly sever their connection to the mainland. We turn their nodes into logistical nightmares that suck up Beijing defensive resources.
Finally, we have to embrace a maritime mosaic doctrine of distributed mass.
Precision weapons make massive expensive platforms cost ineffective to defend.
We must force China into a losing mathematical game. If they build a billion dollar destroyer, we counter it with a hundred 5 million dollar autonomous explosive drone boats. Forcing them to waste expensive air defense missiles on cheap swarms flips the cost exchange ratio entirely in our favor.
On the home front, true containment is not about building a wall to keep the enemy out. It is about altering the environment so that every step they take forward costs them exponentially more than it costs us to resist.
To achieve this, the Indian Navy absolutely has to shed its platform centric prestige and pivot to system destruction warfare.
We need an institutional evolution from a structure that values physical mass to one that values informational agility. Our force design must prioritize distributed low cost capability over concentrated high value assets.
We need to stop fighting attrition battles over geographic points because a highly advanced military is inherently brittle if you target its systemic architecture and data reliance.
Ultimately this requires a bureaucratic transmutation. We must decouple our defense budget from rigid legacy platform counts and traditional service domains.
Capitalization must be directed entirely toward multi domain functional capabilities. That is how we maintain the technological fluidity to actually gain the upper hand.
Precision weapons is what I have been talking about for years, as also the vulnerability of large platforms with large radar cross sections. That is not at issue here. All I’m saying is don’t underestimate the politico-military value of actual presence ‘coz most times is peacetime!
pravin sawhney says wei qi game means china wants peace so that both sides get time for development of their cou tries and for creating credible deterrence. Is that the same thing?
Peace on Chinese terms? Sure!
Dr Karnad, You have very well pointed out that how India can weaponize choke point of the Malacca straits. Can Pakistan (and Bangladesh) do the same for the Arabian sea as well as the Bay of Bengal regions ie no Indian ship can move from Indian Western/Eastern coastal regions without paying toll to Pakistan or Bangladesh in a way Iran weaponize the strait of Hormuz ?
There’s no way they can do that.
Dr Karnad,
We have seen how Ukraine and Iran have been able to disrupt maritime trade through important sea routes using drones. Why can Pakistan/Bangladesh not replicate these ? Moreover China has an additional incentive to help these countries choke India within South Asia/Bay of Bengal/Arabian sea using drones. So capabilities are not the problem here. So why do you sound negative on this possibility.
On paper, anybody can do anything! But Bangladesh would be throttled, and Pakistan operating all the way from Karachi, really?
@Shivam- We should, could….We must all these aspects are for people/systems which are willing to change. What you say makes sense but trust me nothing ever will change in India because colonial era hangover is way too high. A prime example of which is the following;
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/mumbai-ahmedabad-bullet-train-project-japan-minister-blames-india-for-delays-shinkansen-hideki-makihara-2949895-2026-07-17
A few excerpts from the aforementioned;
Tsujimura alleged that Indian officials privately knew that the target of starting operations in 2023 was unrealistic. “The Shinkansen project in India is something I was involved with myself, but what stood out in international meetings and negotiations was the sheer recklessness of the Indian side, repeated over and over,” Makihara said.
He alleged that Indian officials routinely failed to honour commitments. “They just don’t keep promises, no matter what. Even if they make a promise, they flip it right away,” the former Japanese minister added.
Makihara further accused Indian authorities of negotiating solely in their own interest. “They keep pushing their own self-interest right up to the very end. The minister in charge was especially awful. If the top guy’s like that, there’s no way to have any decent dealings,” he said.
Corruption and nepotism is spread so widely in the Indian system that I have zero trust/faith in the integrity of anyone in the Indian establishment.
Mr. Karnad,
You might eventually get your wish of India and Indonesia charging a toll @ straits of Malacca, Lombok and Sunda under the guise of environmental fee for instance …as victims of global warming.. but I don’t think it would be out of strategic thinking as you have argued but economic necessity as once the existing economic order starts failing which is already been showing signs of failing, both India and Indonesia would have to take this step to generate revenue and foreign exchange.
deviating off topic here , another contrarian thought about your recommendation of India placing a nuclear trip wire at the China border. Sure, this would certainly secure the borders with China but the issue with this may be that as a mirroring action, the Chinese and Pakistanis could do the same thereby indirectly de facto finalizing the contested borders. I am not so sure this is something that our political class would necessarily prefer as it is fashionable for them to make rhetorical remarks about borders from time to time depending on the political mood in the county.
Not sure what you mean by “finalizing” contested borders. India has been seeking resolution of territorial disputes on the basis of the LAC and LOC as international borders.
Greetings professor,
Should we be worried about the China’s south china sea’s transgressions against Philippines?
Although, they are only using water canons for now but, generally, that is how the Chinese up the ante when USA is otherwise occupied. (Nathula Crisis, 1967 Philippines attack) etc.
Regards.
Jai HInd!
Yes.
Greetings professor.
The reopening of nathu la and shipki la is giving me the willies. I could not stop myself and I have to ask.
Are we , FINALLY, planning on arming the free tibet movement through this? Or are the Chinese opening the wakhan corridor for us in return of the commercial roads?
IF WE ARE NOT, WE MIGHT AS WELL JOIN THE BRI!
Regards,
Jai hind!
Of course, there’s no Chinese give; it is India’s move for “normalising” relations!
We are finally waking up sir!!
3 places marked as illegal and the tibetan pressure has begun. I hope, I really hope, it is our doing and not the USA’s.
What do you think sir?
Jai hind!
Good, even if late
Greetings professor,
I recently heard a talk by V. Adm. (Retd.) Sanjay Mahindru on a platform where he was speaking about sub surface warfare. He made an observation that in sub-surface warfare, the order of battle of a country is not dependent on the order of battle of the adversary. Eg, If the adversary has 20 SSNs, I must have 30, is NOT the way it works.
So, what are the factors which would decide Bharat’s order of battle for sub surface warfare? I think it is important to know, now that China is about to break out of the first island chain!
Regards,
Jai Balochistan
Jai Hind!
Mahindru raised the right issue. Something to ponder.