Security Wise

“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 part 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 Delhi 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.

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 — 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!

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indo-Pacific, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Relations with Russia, Russia, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons, Western militaries | Tagged france, india, news, Pakistan, politics | 27 Comments

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.

Posted in Afghanistan, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence procurement, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Iran and West Asia, Islamic countries, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, Trade with China, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons, West Asia, Western militaries | Tagged india, iran, news, Pakistan, politics | 21 Comments

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 history, india, news, Pakistan, politics | 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 China, climate-change, energy, india, politics | 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 india, kashmir, Pakistan, politics, Terrorism | 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 india, kashmir, Pakistan, politics, Terrorism | 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 history, india, news, Pakistan, politics | 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 india, iran, Israel, news, politics | 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 | 44 Comments

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