Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, addressing The League of Nations in Geneva on June 30, 1936, invoked the collective security clause and, with great gravitas and grace, asked this council to act against the aggressor, Italy, with no confidence whatsoever that his pleas would beget the desired action. The Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, had used a small dispute over an Ethiopian oasis town in the Ogaden region to invade Ethiopia a year earlier to realise what he considered Italy’s right to it’s own set of colonies in Africa to match the British East African Territories, and German Tanganyika — the very grandly conceived Africa Orientale Italia, comprising other than Ethiopia, an annexed Somalia and other smaller principalities. It was an age when even middling European powers thought nothing of carving up parts of the non-white world as their own eminent domains. “What reply shall I have,” Selassie famously asked the League, as great power representatives tried to avoid meeting the Emperor’s fierce gaze, “to take back to my people?”
It marked the beginning of the end of the League of Nations set up by the victorious powers of the First World War at the 1919 Treaty of Versailles to preserve peace, their interests and their order.
Nicolas Maduro, the erstwhile President of oil-rich Venezuela, is no Selassie. But, Ethiopia’s fate consumed the League. Maduro’s forcible removal by US Special Forces may have started the unravelling of the UN in slow motion. Unexpectedly for Trump, the independently elected Vice President of the country, Delcy Rodriguez, has asked for an expeditious return by the US of Maduro, and otherwise demanded America keep it’s hands off her country. Moscow, and Beijing — which has invested over USD 70 billion mostly in it’s oil industry, will definitely want a restoration of the status quo ante, failing which a Rodriguez dispensation with no obvious links to the US, when what Trump wants is a pliable government in Caracas which will hand over the country’s oil fields to US companies to run, a’la Aramco in Saudi Arabia.
But, as the UN Secretary General warned, such unilateral action bodes ill because, he declared, it will set a precedent. So, what’s new? Even for the level of brazenness, the manner in which the hemispheric hegemon — the United States of America, exercised it’s geostrategic Monroe Doctrine imperatives and ordered the capture of the presidential compound in Caracas, after securing a nearby military airfield, and spirited away Maduro and spouse out of the country aboard USS Iwo Jima, must surely herald something unprecedented — a return to a time when powerful countries did what they pleased. The US President Donald J Trump made plain his reasons — no, not the violation of democratic norms by Maduro, but that America now had the largest oil field in the world under it’s control, and can force the price of oil down to cents on the barrel. It is the hoary issue of controlling natural resources. If China did the same thing by cornering rare earths reserves worldwide over the last 15 years but by stealth, Trump means to do it by rougher and readier means.
On Venezuela’s request the UN Security Council will be convening to discuss the matter today. For the record, Washington claims “narco-terrorism” as instigating its military intervention and has justified it under the self-defence provision of the Charter. Russia and China have accused America of straightforward aggression, violative of all UN norms of peaceful conflict resolution.
It will be interesting to see what India’s official position will be — as of 0530 hrs IST 4th January 2026, there was no reaction from Delhi. Will it stand by the principle of inviolate sovereignty and join in condemning the US at the UN and elsewhere. Or do what it did in 2019 when the Venezuelan-US relations last flared up, and Delhi urged peace, neutrality, and similar pablum. Because Maduro’s hijacking sets another kind of precedent. Thus, a country can charge and try in absentia leader of another country and then arrange for his shanghai-ing out of his country to face imprisonment in the country that indicted him. It would be a free for all, and no leader will be able shake off the fear of a similar thing happening to him. Specifically, Narendra Modi has been held legally responsible by many Western human rights agencies for the killings of Muslims in Gujarat when he was CM. He could be waylaid in any foreign country he’s visiting and transferred to face trial. If it happened to Maduro today, it could happen to Modi, or Mohammad bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia or anyone else, tomorrow. It’d be chaos. I mean, who is to stop, say, the Local police apprehending (with Xi Jinpeng’s connivance, of course) Trump when he is visiting Beijing for breaking some Chinese law, in which case what can Washington and the US military do short of initiating WW3? Such are the complications, the Trump actions have set in motion, considering the UNSC will do no more than what the League did faced by Ethiopia’s case.
Actually, it is in India’s vital interest to ensure a complete breakdown of the UN system by sharpening the big power clashes of interest.
India has benefitted nothing from the UN once Nehru, in his surfeit of good feelings for China offered the permanent security council seat offered India by the US and the Soviet Union in 1955-56 to it’s mortal enemy — Maozedong’s China. India has ever since been like the beggar with its nose on the glass panes — wanting what those in the inside have. The Indian government, with the benighted MEA in the lead, believe that it is only a matter of time and turn of events before India is permanently seated. That is about as likely as snow in The Delhi summer, because there’s China barring India’s entry. No, there has to be a new system, a new order, and it is time the Modi regime does what is needed — ek dhakka or dau, to collapse the UN as is.
The only Indians who benefitted from the UN and the Bretton Woods financial institutions — truth be told — are the hordes of diplomats and civil servants — and only because they could speak and draft documents in passable English language better than their Third World counterparts, and who parlayed short stints at these orgs and their numerous agencies into comfortable dollar-indexed pensions and residence abroad, or at home. The country otherwise got a short shrift. Recall how the US and the UK played Nehru such that he submitted the Kashmir issue to the UNSC in 1948 and permanently stymied India?
India has no stake in the existing structures and systems of international order. The pity is our political leadership lacks the strategic druthers to break and disrupt such that a new order emerges where India has more say.
President Donald Trump hosts a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Thursday, February 13, 2025, in the Oval Office.(Official Photo by Molly Riley)
As 2026 rolls in, the jauntiness and confidence in the country’s foreign policy on display just a year ago is nowhere in evidence. Then, Donald J Trump had been re-elected to a second term, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, egged on by his minister for external affairs with skin in the game, S Jaishankar, who had doubled down on centering India’s foreign policy on the United States and riding it’s coattails, felt they had hit jackpot. They acted as if Trump was the answer to their fervent prayers and they had four years to capitalise on the Howdy-doody spirit they hoped would propel bilateral relations to another level and pitch India into the big league. They plainly did not expect the cratering of ties that happened instead.
Op Sindoor was supposed to benchmark the convergence of interests. Of India and America reaffirming their interest in dealing squarely with terrorism in the process of stamping it out. Delhi had given Washington notice of the retaliatory action in the works for the ISI-managed Pahalgam massacre in April. Washington waited with interest. Except, Trump saw it as an easy occasion to claim a supernumerary role for himself as peacemaker in an operation Delhi had assured him would be so limited as to end before anything really started. And was genuinely surprised when the Modi regime in high dudgeon rejected any such role, putting a crick in his campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize —which Trump thought was his by right because his bête noire and predecessor, Barack Obama had won one in 2009 for doing even less!
But why was Trump surprised? Because he read Modi as another Third World hanger-on and anticipated he’d fall in line with the Trumpian charade of a great peacemaker let loose on an unwary world. The reaction to show Modi and India their place in his scheme of things swiftly followed. The foolish-sounding Asim Munir — replay his silly speech to a bunch of startled NRPs, comfortably settled in the West, getting an earful of jihad when all they sought was a photo op with the new Emir of Pakistan, suddenly was given audience at the White House he had been hankering for. Not to miss out on the main chance, he applied the grease on thickly for the gilded Trump to slide in on. And just as suddenly, Munir found himself anointed Trump’s man in S Asia and Pakistan as US’ go-to friend in the region. To fit his newly exalted station, he elevated himself to Field Marshal!
More importantly, Munir is now installed as the guardian of Trump Family’s billion dollar crypto interests and newly developed interest in that country’s gold and copper reserves in Reko Diq. Depending on how willing Trump is to protect his mining concessions, American secret forces — courtesy private armies run by Blackwater, a company controlled by Eric Prince, ex-US SEAL, for the Pentagon, will be deployed in Baluchistan and get into a fight with the hardy Baloch fighters, perhaps the doughtiest in the world. It’ll involve the Baloch gangs lording it over Karachi — these are not Dhurandhar fiction, turning fully against the intruder-invader Americans, and the facilitator Pakistani state, and then THE GAME will be on! Hopefully, India will have a say in what transpires. Because Russia and China will certainly be there and active, doing their utmost to make life immensely difficult for Washington, and putting the future of the state of Pakistan in serious jeopardy.
For the nonce, it has left Modi and Jaishankar baffled, seeing their foreign policy edifice of cards come crashing down around them. But, when in doubt, they reverted to what they consider safe — carrying on with the US on American terms. Thus, even as Trump has left Indian foreign policy in a shambles, Jaishankar continues with the country’s Indo-Pacific policy as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has decreed it as if nothing’s amiss, nothing has happened to push relations southward. It is Jaishankar’s touching belief in a policy of being more loyal than the king, nursing the fond hope that things will be back to normal. But when the new normal is less forgiving India should be more prepared, not less as is the case now.
Lacking any show of guts, will, and wiles by India, China is seemingly the master of all it surveys in Asia, daily offering not just Japan but also America provocations as an indecisive Trump recedes with tail between his legs, talking up a big ship navy one moment, and displaying readiness to cut a separate deal with Xi the next, leaving Delhi in particular up the proverbial creek.
Alas, these facts staring the Modi government in the face cannot be long ignored. Trumpian Washington has moved on from Modi, and India has to wean itself away from the chimeric comforts of a one-sided never-never relationship. The sooner it does so the better for the country and for Modi to save what face he is still left with. Rather than gear up for the challenge, the Indian government is choosing to show its rump to Beijing — more trade, more visas for Chinese businessmen, and more talk about more talks, as a gesture of submission.
Bangladesh is once again on the boil, and the internal situation there is trending such that India’s intervention may become necessary to once and for all to not only lance the Bangladeshi boil but to end a geostrategic problem threatening India’s territorial integrity. India cannot and should not any longer tolerate a country on its eastern flank threatening to become China’s military proxy and extremist Islamist outpost. With an inimical Dhaka making things difficult, potentially the Indian army’s XXXIII Corps can be pincered between Dok La and the Siliguri Corridor. It is time for India to militarily pinch off Bangladesh’s northern Rangpur Division, thereby straightening and rationalising the border roughly on the west-east Balurghat-Gaibandha line.
Delhi has a strong justification for a couple of territorial revisions. Firstly, the forcible amalgamation of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) – a campaign that would have had a head start had the army been sprightly and offensive-minded enough to take the Haji Pir Salient in Operation Sindoor, as argued in a post anticipating Indian retaliation after Pahalgam in late April. And secondly, widening the 60 km long, 17–22 km wide Siliguri Corridor — India’s “Achilles’ heel”, by absorbing Bangladesh’s northern-most Rangpur Division, because in Dhaka’s hands, it poses an existential threat. Widening the Corridor is, therefore, a national security imperative, especially now that Bangladesh is in military cahoots with China.
Integrating the Rangpur Division into Assam (not West Bengal) would increase India’s margin of error when dealing with the Chinese PLA entrenched in the Dok La trijunction of India, Bhutan, and China just 30 kms uphill from the Corridor. India can do it the easy, or the hard way. The ideal solution would be, of course, to induce Dhaka to negotiate a peaceful handover of the 16,185 sq km sized Rangpur Division to preempt a Bangladesh-China military hookup. The Indian government can offer to buy off outright the Division adjoining the Corridor on the Bangladesh side for $10-$20 billion — thereby easing that country’s outstanding debt-problem (of $104 billion), as a one-time permanent settlement. Failing that, Dhaka would have to give an absolute and enforceable guarantee with a treaty that it will not, under any circumstances, create a strategic nexus or work militarily in concert with China (or Pakistan).
Should Dhaka ever, at any time, for any reason, resile from this undertaking, or falter on this guarantee– formalised in a bilateral agreement, India should feel free to slice off what a keen student of geostrategy, the Bharatiya Janata Party Chief Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has been ahead of the curve on this matter, identified in a May 2025 post on ‘X’ (previously Twitter), as the two corridors in Bangladesh at even greater risk – its ‘two chicken necks’ as he put it. He was referring to the 80 km long ‘North Bangladesh Corridor from Dakhin Dinajpur to the South West Garo Hills’, which if cut off would sever the Rangpur Division from Bangladesh.
And the ‘Second [being] the 28 km Chittagong Corridor, from South Tripura to the waters of the Bay of Bengal. This corridor, smaller than India’s chicken neck,’ Sarma correctly observed, ‘is the only link between Bangladesh’s economic capital and political capital.’ But the threat of annexing the Chittagong Corridor as well can be held in abeyance to moderate any severe reaction by Dhaka to the loss of Rangpur. Indian government and the Assam state government and their agencies should keep up a steady drumbeat about the strategic vulnerability posed to the Indian northeast by an ill-disposed Bangladesh conniving with adversaries, so that a valid and substantive justification is available for decisive action to realise territorial revision.
The absorption of the Rangpur Division would firm up an already strong Indian military presence in the Corridor with the S-400 centered layered air defence now augmented with an additional brigade distributed over three strong points at Bamuni, Kishanganj and Chopra – a standing force that can, at any time, move in on the Rangpur Division. Provocative statements about capturing the Siliguri Corridor and detaching the Indian northeast from the mainland regularly emanating from many quarters in Bangladesh only build up the Indian case for a surgical operation, offering India a rationale for militarily grabbing the territory that it must have. Assimilating a small piece of Bangladesh and converting the Siliguri Corridor into a toughened neck of a mountain goat — not anymore a chicken’s neck, would moreover give more room for the three army brigades deployed there.
In such a situation Bangladesh, aided by Pakistan, will no doubt canvas for the usual political US intervention to prevent Delhi’s remapping its border. But a stern warning, quietly conveyed, about such interference imperilling the foundational accords and the FTA, should prove dissuasive. The US is far from the super power it once was and needs every bit of help to deal with China, and India is not the country the Nixon-Kissinger duo tried to bully in 1971. Further, America’s criticality to India’s economic future is exaggerated. After the initial downturn in exports post-Trump tariffs, did Indian industry and exporters not find alternative markets? Further, where else can Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook sell their wares or gather the massive data for their AI large language models under development? And can Silicon Valley import talent in bulk from anywhere else as it can from India? It would really help if the Indian government did not buckle under the slightest US pressure, rather than imposing counter-pressure, by accelerating the country’s movement to de-dollarising trade as BRICS is doing, and using other leverages. Stiffening the stance vis a vis the US combined with nuclear missile arming of states bordering China — conventional Brahmos missiles should only be a start, will send a complementary message to Beijing. A payback, like vengeance, is best served cold.
But the Modi government is unlikely to stand up to Washington or, nearer home, even initiate a diplomatic dialogue with Dhaka to explore a territorial transaction — a latter day “Louisiana Purchase” to buy the Rangpur Division, or to configure a treaty guaranteeing a denatured Sino-Bangladeshi threat to the Siliguri Corridor on the pain of decisive Indian military action. Moreover, a military operation for territorial revision against Bangladesh is beyond anything the Modi regime can even contemplate, considering it is, among major governments, possibly the last true believer in a liberal international order that frowns upon such activity and is nearly extinct, because the main props of this order — the US and Russia, are torpedoeing it. US President Donald Trump is spoiling for a fight with Venezuela, and is on the cusp of starting military hostilities to oust the Nicolas Maduro government, besides warning of other military actions to hive off Greenland from Denmark, at the European end, and at the Central America end, the Panama Canal Zone from Panama. And Russia is bloodily dismembering Ukraine.
But like the previous Indian governments, Modi’s too preemptively stumbles, bumbles, and bends its knee to Washington and Beijing, and inspires no confidence it will aggressively do the right thing by the country where national security is concerned. Look what happened in Sindoor, when Trump insulted and humiliated Modi and deliberately pedestalised “Field Marshal” Asim Munir, and all the Indian government did was diplomatically shuffle its feet.
If the ruling BJP — an avowed nationalist party lacks the guts to revise the Siliguri Corridor map, what can be expected from political parties — Congress and Trinamool Congress who, over decades, methodically padded the electoral rolls with Muslims from Bangladesh to stay in power in the bordering states of Assam and West Bengal?
The issue of the 18 million-odd residents in the Rangpur Divisional area, however, is a socio-political problem that will have to be given careful consideration, and reasonably should, as part of the military operation, lead to this population being pushed into Bangladesh, to eliminate the possibility of Bangladeshi revanchism. Or it will only enlarge the communal demographic Bomb in the Indian east, and in the context of the diminution of the Hindu population in, and the institutionalised mistreatment of Hindus, in Bangladesh, it is a potentially volatile and nested issue the country cannot afford to have.
Hindus, who in 1947 constituted over 28% of the then East Pakistan territory, and 13% in 1971 at the time of the creation of Bangladesh with India’s military help, is now whittled down to less than 8% (some 13 million). The religious rightwing Jamaat-e-Islami party never forgave India for midwifing an independent Bangladesh — and its anti-India bias is what Jamaat and its extremist offshoots have been propagating, attended by progressively greater levels of violence. In Pakistan, the condition of Hindus is lots worse. The Hindu population plummeted from 14.6% of the population in 1947 to 1.2% (or, 3.1 million) today, in good part because the Hindu population transferred en masse to India, and since then owing, among other things, to regular abduction and forcible marriage and conversion of teenage Hindu girls — a programme backed by the mullahcracy.
This did not occur to me when I posted the original. But the 13 million Hindus remaining in BD are near about in size to the 18 million Muslims in Rangpur Division for full and clear transfers of populations — zeroing out Hindu population in Bangladesh for the 18 million Muslims in Rangpur Div, rendering BD a fully religiously homogenous country per Jamaat-e-Islami’s desire, and helping India obtain a more secure border in the east. This is a clean break solution that, as I argued in an earlier post, should have been the basis of Partition in 1947 as Dr BR Ambedkar, the sanest leader in the freedom movement, had strongly advocated.
By way of context, Muslims in India — 9.8% (35.4 million) of the population post-Partition has grown unhindered to some 14% (200 million) in the present day– the third largest Muslim population in the world.
Before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down to talk turkey at the 23rd India-Russia summit yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published a story by its Delhi Bureau chief (https://www.wsj.com/world/india/putin-and-modi-deepen-relationship-that-has-drawn-trumps-anger-bef8f813) saying that Dmitry Peskov was wrong in signalling that the visit would result in consequential deals for “Russian jet fighters” (Su-57) and “missile air-defence systems” (S-400). “Indian officials”, the story said, “have quietly discouraged the idea that any such agreements will emerge during the visit.” US President Donald Trump’s displeasure at any arms deal in the offing was known to Delhi.
Considering that Peskov is the official spokesman for Putin and, in some circles, tagged as the man to succeed him in the Kremlin, calling him out this way was an extraordinarily risky thing to do — because what he said represented Putin’s views. While the Russian President may forgive the Indian government because, well, Modi, as if to compensate, laid on the praise for Putin a bit thick at the formal state dinner last night, Peskov may be less forgiving. Being publicly contradicted is a variety of personal slight, and diplomatic slights are rarely forgotten by men on the way up who eventually make it to the top. (Remember Mani Shankar Aiyar’s “chaiwallah” jibe against Modi that ended up in a huge circle of collateral damage around the Congresswallah?)
The official Indian position, moreover, was anticipated by Tina Dolbaia, a Russia expert at a WashingtonDC think tank — the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said, as the Journal reported, that “India would need tacit US approval to pursue major new deals [because] A US law allows for sanctions on countries that purchase major defence hardware from Russia.” What? Really?!!
So, Trump is driving India’s Foreign and Military Policy? I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt to the Modi regime, thinking it cannot be so daft, and believe that the formal decision to go in for the Su-57, S-400, and the miniature nuclear reactors with total tech transfer and production rights, is being held in abeyance — a ruse to be used in the mean time as leverage against America. Fine, but leverage to get what?
Surely, Delhi was not expecting a turnaround in the US strategy and to commit more fully to the Indo-Pacific because that, as the US National Security Strategy document released by the White House two days back, said clearly, won’t happen. The Trump Administration has indicated it will concentrate on itself — on one-sided trade deals, capturing energy sources and critical mineral reserves anywhere by any means, and on hemispheric security — Central and South America (whence the underway efforts to remove the Maduro regime in Venezuela). So, India cannot expect to once again be a free rider on security. It will have to rely on itself.
But, whatever Washington says, what does the Modi regime really desire from the US — ah, yes, technology! It is difficult to see just why people like Modi, Jaishankar (and the entire MEA caboodle — and, in this respect, refer the op/ed in today’s Indian Express by Shyam Saran, a former Foreign Secretary) see the US as a leader in advanced technology and as willing to part with it to India! When the facts are that, by almost any metric China is now in the technology vanguard in the most cutting edge areas — Artificial Intelligence, Quantum computing, semiconductors, digital connectivity, biotech, and greentech (see the eye-opening report on China’s tech leap by the Mercator Institute in Germany, https://merics.org/en/china-tech-observatory ), and the US has transferred NO technology or military hardware of any note to India in the last 70-odd years!
The only reason India may end up getting the F-35 is because Trump will succeed in pressuring Modi to buy this phenomenally useless combat aircraft — an absolute lemon and operational liability that spends more time on the ground than in the air. The US Government desperately needs foreign buyers to amortise the $2 trillion programme cost sunk into it by Lockheed and the American tax payer — and guess who stands out as the prime sucker they can unload this dud on? The petro-rich, brain-empty Arab states aside, you guessed it — INDIA with some officers holding high posts in the IAF actually salivating over getting it — the very definition of masochism! Trump is confident he can arm twist Modi and India to do anything and, with Jaishankar and IAF assisting, get him to buy anything, and that “good friend” Modi won’t hold his being repeatedly humiliated on Sindoor, or having his nose rubbed in the dirt by rewarding Pakistan and being pally with “Field Marshal” Asim Munir, against him!
But does the Indian government think it cannot do without the US on its side? When the 50% tariffs were imposed, Delhi hyperventilated but, after a period of discomfiture, found that the Indian exporters had found other markets. And that the Indian industry was generally humming, the dip in exports to the US notwithstanding. The lesson that Delhi should have drawn was that if the US is not all that critical to the country’s economy, it is even less relevant to India’s defence. This then should have been the baseline seriously to mobilise an “all of nation” effort and become genuinely atmnirbhar. Whenever the government has trusted local entrepreneurs and talent to deliver, they have. That hasn’t occurred.
One also despairs about the Indian government ever getting anything right at any time in the geostrategic field, even as one marvels at China getting every thing right all the time in every sphere, and now has Trump’s America running for its life! And this is the formidable adversary India, willy nilly, has to take on. Or, it can opt for the easy way out as it has always done — just lie down and let Beijing walk all over us, doing which India has had lots of practice over the years.
[Field Marshal Asim Munir presenting a picture to PM Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistani guns supposedly in action against India in Sindoor, except it is a 2019 picture taken from the net of PLA firing guns in an Exercise in China!]
Having US President Donald Trump mouth off something or the other about Pakistan getting the better of India in the “3-day war” in May this year, is one thing. But when a US Congressional Report repeats it, and fleshes out the points, one may conclude that this is now the settled view of the US government. Given the power of the Western media and academia, this will be the standard narrative the world over that the Indian government and military will find impossible to counter.
This was predictable because, like on earlier occasions, the Indian military in this fracas again ended the Sindoor proceedings without a decisive result, handing the Pakistan army — which is more competent in crafting a winner’s narrative than actually fighting anybody (India, Baloch freedom fighters, Tariq-e-Taliban Pakistan), the opportunity with Trump’s help to put out the story of its great victory over Indian arms!
This is the reason I have long warned in my writings that if Delhi carries out military retaliation against Pakistani for terrorist acts within India, it should not go half-cocked or settle for other than a decisive physical result that cannot be denied by GHQ-Rawalpindi or Islamabad. Thus, immediately after the 2019 Balakot strike I pointed out that, if the message to be sent to Pakistan was not to resort to terrorism, it made no sense for the IAF to use a precision weapon — the Israeli Spice 2000 that, because of targeting errors, actually missed hitting what needed to be hit anyway, and uprooted a few trees. What should have been sent in was waves of strike aircraft dropping 500 kg bombs to flatten the Balakot hilltop, accompanied by a combat air patrol component for protection, inviting the Pakistan Air Force into a full-fledged fight.
That would have been unexpected and stunned the PAF and GHQ-R into inaction and compelled them to reconsider its use of the asymmetric weapon — terrorism. I said all this in a subsequent meeting in Vayu Bhavan with the then air chief, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, and a few of his Principal Staff Oficers, none of whom could come up with a satisfactory explanation for the selection of the weapon or, generally, the tactics.
I argued in that and subsequent posts that the the loss of large chunks of POK alone would be disincentive enough and deter GHQ-R in the future from conducting terrorist strikes. But once again — talk of the Indian government and military happily repeating the same mistake! — the army stopped its action after hitting Muridke and Bahawalpur and offered a ceasefire on May 7 that was contemptuously rejected by Director General, Military Operations, Pakistan army — according to his Indian counterpart Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai. Then, as I disclosed, in reaction to Indian intelligence picking up Munir’s boast to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif based on the downing by PAF of several IAF aircraft that he’d “finish of” India in 48 hours, the Indian military attacked the night of May 9/10 and preemptively destroyed a whole bunch of value targets on the other side including, significantly, the PAF’s central command and control centre on Nur Khan Base, Chaklala. See “The ’48 hours” — is why Munir beame a Field Marshal?” posted on May 24, 2025https://bharatkarnad.com/2025/05/24/the-48-hours-is-why-munir-became-a-field-marshal/
With air dominance achieved, the army was offered on a platter an extraordinary opportunity to take Haji Pir, which it did not. Instead of instantly triggering Indian army units to converge on the Bulge from Uri, Mandi and Poonch, to take Haji Pir with the Indian Special Forces cutting of the salient on the north-south Uri-Poonch line, the army sat on its hands. Haji Pir is the area through which Pakistan army’s Inter-Services Intelligence infiltrates terrorists into Jammu and the Srinagar Valley.
If an “arm chair” strategist like myself could, see the political-military value in it, and conceive of such an operation, why did the army’s MO Directorate not plan and push for such action? Because, it turns out, nobody had anticipated the success of the Indian May 9/10 missile attacks and, therefore, no one in the army had planned for a contingent operation to capture Haji Pir, or any other major feature in POK.
The lack of decisive military results has time and again, cost India, the Indian government and military dear (a phrase I keep repeating!) in terms of serious reputational damage. Sindoor has incurred, perhaps, worse damage.
On November 18 was released the 2025 Report to US Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (at https://www.uscc.gov/annual-report/2025-annual-report-congress). Most such reports while attributing information in them to public sources are published after they are vetted by American intelligence agencies. Saying the May 7-10 clash “drew global attention” because Pakistan “leveraged” Chinese weapon systems and “live inputs” from Chinese intelligence, the Report stated categorically that “Pakistan’s military success over india…showcased Chinese weaponry” with the aerial combat, in particular, “serving as a real world field experiment.” And then added that “Pakistan’s use of Chinese weapons” had resulted in the downing of “French Rafale fighter jets” before conceding that of the three Indian combat aircraft shot down — a scaling down of Trump’s latest figure of loss of eight Indian aircraft, “not all may have been Rafales”, meaning at least one was (the one shot over Bhatinda that I mentioned).
Going forward, this then will be the narrative attached to Sindoor. All the bleatings by Indian government and military officials to the contrary, notwithstanding. Because we never learn any lessons, India, its government and its military are fated to repeat the mistake of retaliating small. Already, there have been a number of terrorist attacks since Pahalgam without an Indian response. So what’s the worth of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s threat he made after Sindoor that any terrorist incident will occasion a hard Indian reaction?
There’s something after all to the Israeli attitude — not the Hamurabi Code of an eye for an eye, but both eyes for just looking as if you mean to hurt!
Sometimes developments come to such a pass and a situation emerges that, one senses, teeters on a consquential turn of events. The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 4-5 visit for the 23rd India-Russia Summit is one such event. In many ways, it is a make or break situation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy. To its great demerit it early discarded his “India First” dictum, latching on, curiously, to Donald J Trump’s “America First” edicts, based on a complete and thorough misreading of the US President and American policy generally. It put a dunce’s cap on 30 years of Indian policy that espied premium and profit in edging closer to the US — a move begun by PV Narasimha Rao in the mid-1990s, and recommended by just about any and everybody prominent in the public opinion space at the time and since.
Among the policy influencers giving the lead was the late K. Subrahmanyam, ex-IAS, who held a special place in the Indian establishment, not least because he was virtually the institutional memory on national security matters whom, political leaders across the board, heeded. Unmoored from a Soviet Union that was falling apart by the hour, it was perhaps understandable that KS and others believed, as Narasimha Rao did, that India should close-in with America in the hope that doing so would benefit the country, help it to take giant economic and technological strides in the manner China did when assisted by the US.
The difference is China had Dengxiaoping India, unfortunately, had no comparable leadership. Modi promised much and delivered some, but consider how much more the country would have gained from a genuine unshackling of the private sector.
If the Nixon-Kissinger US policy raised China’s stock to an extent that it now rivals America, power-wise, this outcome has made Washington wary of repeating the same mistake with India. India will simply not be allowed to unilaterally mine the US for technology — one of the Modi government’s main reasons for intimate relations, nor will its exports enjoy the kind of sustained economic penetration Chinese industry was permitted. And almost every meaningful transaction will come with strings attached.
Thus, India was originally promised a total transfer of technology for the GE 404IN20 jet engine technology by Trump in his first term. He reversed it soon thereafter to Delhi’s chagrin, with the US President insisting Delhi buy these power plants. The demand is relatively huge — engines for as many as 352 Tejas light combat aircraft to be inducted into the Indian Air Force. In a 2021 deal, India contracted to pay $716 million for 99 engines. Only TWO engines were delivered as of September 2025! Undeterred, HAL signed a still bigger $1 billion deal for 113 jet engines. We can expect that the supply will be strung out and the Tejas bulk production delayed sporadically and in a manner to disrupt the smooth and steady induction into IAF and to periodically bring Delhi to its knees, as a means of extracting some concession or the other. In short, the Modi regime has made the success of the Tejas programme and IAF’s effectiveness hostage to passing American foreign policy interests.
In his second term, Trump has been especially harsh on Modi, believing that the Indian PM’s unwillingness to publicly acknowledge his fake role in ending Sindoor, cost him the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump’s bitterness led to his latest outburst a couple days back when he not only repeated his claim that it was the Indian PM who pleaded with him to restore peace with Pakistan, but — something new — that he had to threaten 350% tariffs on both countries to bring the military clash to a close!
Trump’s personal vendetta resulted in the imposition of 50% tariffs on Indian trade. And his threat to sanction Indian companies for importing Russian energy was activated just when he gave Kyiv a November 27 deadline to fall in line with his peace solution for Ukraine, or face an immediate cutoff of military aid and intelligence assistance! The timings of these two developments indicate that Russian energy imports by India was only an excuse for threatening US sanctions and increased tariffs — a punitive policy Trump had decided way back that Delhi would be subjected to no matter what, just so Modi was shown his place!
Except, Trump’s peace deal involves UKR President Volodymyr Zelensky agreeing to surrender all of the eastern region of Donbas to Russia that the two states have been bloodily fighting over for the past three years, and for Ukraine not to join NATO or even have an army! It is a warning to allies and partners alike that it is perilous for any country to have the US for an ally or partner, or rely on America for anything, least of all national security.
Yet, here was Defence Minister Rajnath Singh flying to Honolulu to sign on Oct 31 a 10-year framework for India-US defence partnership! Even as in the previous week, petroleum minister Hardip Puri, signed an accord for annual import of 2.2 million tonnes of liquified natural gas, declaring that this deal had nothing whatsoever to do with the Free Trade Agreement being negotiated, or the threat of US sanctions. The government agencies and private companies meanwhile moved to shutdown the Russian energy import channels! And the FTA negotiators from the commerce ministry too prepared to cede ground by incorporating provisions in it already offered the UK, EU, etc of opening Indian government procurement to international bidders, and to not require foreign tech companies to part with source codes or anything else that might remotely help India’s self-sufficiency drive in the military technology sector! And Delhi is on the point of surrendering the country’s digital sovereignty. The Modi government then showed just how much Trump means to his diplomacy, by having a rethink about the next G20 Summit just because Trump declined to attend it!
With Trump intentionally insulting and humiliating Modi any time a TV camera is near by, and his Administration missing no opportunity to hurt India’s economic and security interests, Modi and his government’s response has been startlingly submissive. There is so much holding back and ingratiating behaviour by the PM, his minions, and the Indian government, it is unbearable! It is as if Washington has done India no wrong, and even if it has, that it doesn’t really matter! It is an attitude that ulimately reflects on the country. To be so taken for granted reveals just what Trump thinks of India under Modi — not all that different, it appears, from how he perceives a pliant Pakistan under his favourite “Field Marshal”, Asim Munir!
If after 5 years of dealing with a wayward and impulsive Trump, who’s proved himself a consummate bully who will kick you in the nuts if you bend, Delhi keeps bending. May be even at this late date, Modi and Jaishankar and the rest of them could learn from Mira Nair’s spawn and New York city’s mayor-elect, Zoran Mamdani’s meeting in the White House with Trump. He won the elections in the face of Trump doing everything he could to defeat him. He held his own, talked back, and won praise from the US President, and had political analysts announce something known to all, except our MEA and Indian government, that Trump respects “strength and winners”. But, Modi and India are seen by Washington as neither strong nor as winners and is, perhaps, why the US President thinks that India can be reined in and jerked around at will to suit America’s purpose. Delhi to-date has, by its compliant posture and policies, only confirmed Trump-Washington’s view.
Why hasn’t Modi built on the political-economic understanding with Brazil and South Africa, by coupling the military cooperation aspects of IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) which periodically has its navies in the southern oceans, stressing this unique “three continents” initiative in military-security terms? And why doesn’t he talk to Putin about joining IBSA which group I have elsewhere advocated as BRIS — BRICS minus China, which would seminally serve India’s security interests at the expense of China’s? Delhi has to begin seeing its external relations in their military aspects, and stop leaning on the US whose attitude is “what can you do for me?”, not what we can do together.
It is in this situation that Putin visits Delhi. Russia’s biggest concern is not NATO or Europe, but how to keep America and China at bay. India is Moscow’s high card, and Kremlin is leaving nothing to chance. Russian commentaries suggest Moscow is a bit shaken by Modi regime uncharacteristically wagging its tail around Trump, even as he kicks India around. Putin thinks that this is the time to draw India closer, and decided to restore the relationship by pulling out all the stops. The Russians are offering a genuine 5th-gen Su-57 stealth twin-engined Su-57 — the US F-35 equivalent — with absolute complete technology transfer — no ifs and buts, including the jet engine, AESA radar, and the weapons load at around @$60 million — about $10 million more than what an off-the-shelf buy’d cost. It’d be a far more economical bridge to an era of unmanned aerial warfare.
Indians, who have been under the impression that Russian combat aircraft and other military hardware are not the equal of the Western items, must take publicity campaigns and advertisements a little too seriously. In metallurgy and rugged construction Russia excels; the difference in electronics/avionics is “athara-bees” (18-20) — in operational terms this slight gap means nothing. The real difference as I have stated repeatedly are innumerable pleasure trips for everyone in the procurement loop to Paris and Istress versus those to Moscow and Irkutsk (the main Sukhoi factory site)!
The Russian terms compelled Dassault to up its game for 114 Rafale as MFA (medium fighter aircraft) in addition to the 36 already contracted for, and to propose its production in India to supply the supposed overflow of international demand unmet by its French manufacturing units. But, it is a transaction that involves transfer of only 60% of the technologies!!
Dassault has made clear it will not budge from its position of “No source codes” for the aircraft — so it is just the usual assembly-screwdrivering deal from imported Semi-Kocked Down/Completely Knocked Down kits — HAL’s specialty. And Paris’s attitude was reflected in Dassault’s rather angry response to the German company Thyssen-Krupp Marine’s willingness to onpass the diesel HDW 214 submarine technology, including source codes, to India for the navy’s Project 75i. Because source codes means affording India not just the ‘know how’ but also the ‘know why’, and Paris was mad as hell that Berlin was giving away the store. It is the sort of development by a fellow West European arms supplier France would do its damndest to dissuade, deter and prevent.
With Dassault and France treating India with such disdain, the real question is why does Modi’s Delhi and the IAF show the Frenchies so much respect — getting slapped in the face only to have the Indian government turn around and want more of the same? It is as if official India sees no other source for military products!
Then again, if not India, which sucker, would keep buying over-rated, over-priced military goods? Ah, yes, I forget — we have oodles of dollars, we are a trillion $ economy!!
In this respect, see how the US government and Western arms suppliers quickly rose up as one to charge China with waging a public opinion campaign to bad-talk Rafale and try and push its own JC-10 post-Sindoor. When the Rafale is, if not a bonafide dud, it is near enough to one in that it nowhere delivers the promised performance. Its supposedly fantastical Spectra avionics suite at the heart of the machine, was a manifest disaster. It failed to pick up, as was revealed in my first post at the time of Sindoor, not just the Pakistan Air Force JC-10, the Chinese PL-15E air-to-air missile it fired from a safe standoff range deep withing Pakistan, but also the Saab 2000 Erieye airborne early warning and control system loitering and cueing the PAF aircraft and missiles to Indian aircraft that were then targeted. So, when the Indian Rafale was brought down over Bhatinda, its pilot had no idea who downed his aircraft, and how.
In the charged milieu of contested narratives, the Tejas 1A’s going down at the Dubai Air Show will provide fodder for the very strong foreign lobby in the IAF — which has always made a monkey out of the Indian government and the country, and will use this incident to push the acquisition of more Rafale. At a stroke, it will kill the Tejas programme and its successor AMCA project as retired Air Marshals publicly canvas for this aircraft even as those serving whisper into ever-receptive ears that Tejas is desi maal, nothing as good as the French stuff, and push for the “safer” Rafale aircraft!
The unpalatable truth is this: It was again a hot-doggin’ pilot who was at fault. Abhinandan in a MiG-21 picked a fight with a Paki F-16 and got shot down over Pakistani territory, begetting us the military-diplomatic embarrassment in February 2019. In Dubai, the Tejas pilot, Wing Commander Namansh Syal — trying to show off to a captive audience, over-estimated his own aerobatic-combat flying skills and competence and, as likely happened, in his downward roll, got disoriented — which happens to the best of fliers, and came too close to the ground to pull up safely — it was NOT loss of power! It is a clear enough case of “controlled flight into terrain”. The machine — the Tejas LCA — is NOT at all to blame. One hopes the court of inquiry investigating this mishap will come to this obvious conclusion. The record of such in-Service inquiries in the past, however, does not inspire confidence that it will do other than blame the machine rather than own up to pilot error, and put the Tejas programme in danger.
The Modi government — defence Minister Rajnath Singh ji, please ensure that this accident is not used as an excuse by the IAF to sideline the Tejas 1A, 2, and AMCA in any way — as the service may be inclined to do and as, in fact, it has done in the past. The Dr Raj Mahindra-designed HF-71/72 — successor to the Marut HF-24, was run right off the drawing board and into the trash bin in the 1970s by the IAF brass, just so the Jaguar — an Anglo-French plane could be purchased — a decision that sank the budding indigenous aerospace industry like a stone. Ironically, the Jaguar was far less steady in low level flight than the HF-24 it replaced. Indeed, in a straight contest the HF-72 would have beaten the Jaguar hands down.
More Rafales in the fleet is a bad option and should be ditched along with the ridiculous deal for producing the 1970s vintage M-88 jet engine that only a brain-addled combo of HAL-DRDO-IAF-Defence Ministry could have preferred over the Kaveri jet engine project that the private sector tandem of L&T and Godrej Aerospace had offered to takeover — which was negatived. This is how local defence industry gets (dis)incentivised by Modi’s atmnirbharta policy.
In any case, more Rafales would be disastrously wrong for two main reasons that the Modi government better ponder seriously. Firstly, because Rafale is only a 4.5 gen combat aircraft, just like the Tejas, when what the Russians are offering is a fully 5th-generation Su-57 and, as a 2-for-1 deal, also the single-engined Su-75. The two-seat configuration that IAF insisted on for the Su-57 (then labelled T-50) when the proposal for collaboration to jointly produce this aircraft was first mooted 15-20 years ago, is what is available to the IAF. And secondly, turning down this offer would signal Moscow that India is not interested in getting close to Russia or in retaining its “strategically autonomous role” in world politics, and that it will bandwagon with America — a proven high-technology Scrooge, whatever the cost. The occasional buys of S-400s and such, won’t convince Putin otherwise. India will then face the music of being frozen by Washington into a third rate power bereft of choices and without the latitude to stand up for itself, and being played by the US. This is what Trump has done to all of America’s allies of long standing — and Delhi wants to join this disillusioned crowd?
In contrast, the Russians assisted us in the most sensitive technology programme — the nuclear-powered ballistic missile firing submarine, and has never quailed from handing over the latest, most advanced tech, while the US makes a song and dance about parting with even 1970s technology, and cannot be expected to do any better in the future. Washington, for instance, is rethinking giving Australian Navy its Virginia class nuclear powered attack submarines. Australia! — part of AUKUS (Australia-UK-US), a revived Anglosaxon confederacy! In 1971, the Soviet Union offered the Tu-22 Backfire longrange high altitude strategic bomber the IAF led by PC Lal and the Government by Indira Gandhi lacking strategic sense, rejected. Now there are people in high places convincing themselves and Modi that Trump and his successors in office can be relied on to hand over remotely first-rate tech. What foolishness is this?!
The IAF Chief of Staff, Air Chief Marshal Aman Preet Singh is personally in a difficult spot, for another reason. He is reportedly in the running along with the more dyed-in-saffron army chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, to replace General Anil Chauhan as Chief of Defence Staff next year, with an additional 3 years of service tagged on. One false step, or a decision that is seen as going awry, will tank his chances. And the potential false step/flawed decision may pertain to the Su-57 or Rafale issue.
[Modi at the Gandhi statue outside the Indian embassy (the building to his left) on Massachusetts Avenue, Washington DC]
A recent extended interview of mine conducted by Dr Hindol Sengupta, a professor at OP Jindal University, for his ‘Global Order’ podcast, may be of interest. It deals with a bunch of issues pertinent to current developments
An earlier interview, post-Sindoor — “India’s biggest mistake in Op Sindoor and why India must get a megaton bomb” may also be of interest at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Bsxwn_bKc
It is a fascinating subject — how leaders take the measure of each other, what happens subsequent to the first few meetings when the impression gets cemented, and how that impacts policy. In one of their first meetings, the wartime US President Franklin Roosevelt, seeking to convey an idea that had occurred to him, barged into the British Prime Minister’s living quarters to discover Winston Churchill standing stark naked in the room. Unruffled, the PM famously drawled “Britain has nothing to hide!” The two leaders got along rather well thereafter!
Nothing as revealing has happened between the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the US President Donald J Trump. But both being, personality-wise, in the same narcissist-autocrat mould — with everything that happens within their governments, and by their governments, being about themselves, may have had mirror impressions of the other.
Very likely, Modi must have been reassured that, unlike the quicker-on-the-ball and more cerebral Barack Obama, who had a Pakistani as his room mate at Columbia University and was familiar with the subcontinental ways — Trump could be pata-oed with a lot of people screaming it up in support, and the colour and the frenzy of a big Indian tamasha. Whence the two big “get to know” PR events in Houston (“Howdy, Modi!” — arranged by the Indian embassy and the Indian NRI community) and in Ahmedabad (“Namaskar, Trump!” — courtesy the Gujarat State and Central governments) would have convinced him of this, especially as Trump, in his first term, wanted to make sure that every noisy American at the Houston circus would convert into a vote for him in the 2020 Presidential elections. Modi, perhaps, calculated that having Trump attend the Ahmedabad do would signal his closeness to Trump, and his ability to get India’s interests realised in the US and the West, and also help him out in the 2024 general elections.
Modi’s belief that he could get what he wanted from the Trump Presidency was, however, misplaced. Indeed, over the past decade, he was able to extract nothing of note from America, even as his government has shaped not just its energy policies around American santions, but India’s relations generally with Russia, and with Iran, while surrendering a great deal of digital sovereignty to boot as well (as revealed in the previous post). But Modi’s flattering of Trump reached its limit when the US President virtually demanded the Indian leader endorse the American’s self-propagated case for the Nobel Peace Prize for terminating Sindoor. Had Modi given in, there was no guarantee Trump’d have kept from hosting Munir and moving the US policy Pakistan-wards. But there was every certainty the Prime Minister would have had the somewhat tenuous credit for Sindoor from being slashed from underneath him providing, at the very least, a lot of campaign fodder to the opposition in the Bihar state elections.
So, it is clear Trump has got most everything he desired from Modi, including huge multi-billion dollar purchases by Delhi of transport aircraft, P-8I maritime recon planes, and vintage M-777 mountain-use light howitzers. And, especially, the “four foundational accords” — the 2016 Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), the 2018 Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), the 2019 Industrial Security Agreement (ISA), and the 2020 Basic Exchange and Coooperation Agreement (BECA). India thus placed itself squarely in the crowded American security tent in Asia without obtaining any real security benefits and, worse, shortchanged itself in terms of negotiating leverage. Sharing of spatial digitised data vide BECA has permitted the US, for instance, an entry point into the Indian satellite communications setup, meaning it may have gained for Washington access that can be used, if its interests so dictate, to onpass critical military information to Pakistan, China, any other adversary!
The only thing the Modi regime retained for Delhi was the decision on the logistics support the US forces could avail of, but only on a case-by-case basis, and the level of participation in the military activity of the Quadrilateral of US, Japan, Australia, India. The fact that India had, in fact, got little in return for putting out with so much was evidenced in the tremendous frustration expressed by many who served in the US government about India’s not doing that little bit extra!
Of course, Delhi’s stalling tactics, and unwillingness to engage militarily in Quad Indo-Pacific operations more fully were also because Russia had to be kept in good humour both as arms supplier and as source of critical mil-tech that Washington would not part with, and as counterweight to both America and China. The US understood this as India furthering its traditional balancer role. With the Quad not pulling its weight, the Biden Administration in 2021 announced the formation of AUKUS — Australia, UK, US, an uncomfortable reminder to the peoples of the Indo-Pacific of an old world Anglo-saxon confederacy.
Now, let’s view this picture from the American angle.
Trump is a professional New York city schmoozer — who cultivated pals everywhere — no knowing when someone might be of use! — to advance his family-commercial-real estate interests. As President in his second term, he has only become more brazen in exploiting his position, leaving no opportunity unexploited to increase his personal and family wealth. This was the reason why Trump cottonned on to Asif Munir, who promised to lay Pakistan at Trump’s feet to use as he saw fit. Islamabad facilitated a crypto currency base in the country — a move to personally enrich Trump, who has invested hugely in it, and offered concessions to US mining companies to extract whatever minerals they can find in the country. And he hinted, after his 2nd White House lunch and meeting with Trump of Pakistan’s pleasure in playing the Central Asia frontier policeman and outpost for America and Western interests, and assist in curtailing China in the region. And Pakistan’s history of having its generals in the US pocket and, more formally, as a longtime American client state quickly cemented the new deal. The US has enough of a hold on the Pakistan establishment and armed forces — as it has, to be fair, on the senior-most echelons of the Indian bureaucracy, MEA, and military (with liberal entry visa/green card issuals for progeny, as well), to ensure this.
Modi was a less known commodity to Trump, but the deals he secured from the Indian PM without parting with much in exchange was because Modi wore his admiration of America and American life too much on his sleeve not to have his American counterpart exploit it to the fullest, which Trump did. All it required was for Trump to pay Modi attention, talk up their supposed “friendship” and, from the other end of his mouth, skewer the Indian Prime Minister with his insistence that it was he who stopped Op Sindoor cold, and in his latest pronouncement, that 8 aircraft were shot down in the 3-day fracas — the tally of Indian losses apparently going up everytime Trump opens his mouth! It is, in fact, Trump turning Modi’s trademark hugs and embraces inside out to string Modi along, even as he plays kitty-ball with Munir, letting slip a reference about Pakistan conducting “nuclear testing” aimed at simultaneously unsettling India and pumping up Islamabad.
What could be plainer? Well, the Panchtantra tales has precisely such cautionary story — recall the one about the monkey inserting itself between two cats squabling over a pat of butter only to have the ape, doling out a “balanced” share of the goody to each, which involved, it first divying up the butter and, in the process of balancing, taking a little from the portion of one cat and then from that of the other cat until the monkey consumed all of it! Same monkey business here, once again, which, as on earlier occasions, has ended up equating/hyphenating India and Pakistan, cutting Modi and India to Pakistan’s size and proportionately elevating Munir and Pakistan!!!
The Modi government has not learned anything after repeated humiliations heaped on the Prime Minister and insults to India. Now the Trump Administration is dangling a US presidential visit to keep Delhi on the hook. Not sure why such visits are so prized by the Indian government and why Indians generally so desire to please the US and the West, and are prepared to suffer no end of indignity, and to jump through all kinds of hoops.
The irony is that while Munir and Islamabad are entirely aware that whatever the cost to the country of playing up to Trump and the US, the benefit to Pakistan is in the deliverables by way of military assistance — especially crucial tactical military intelligence feeds in realtime that have made a difference in the past, Modi and New Delhi have deluded themselves into believing, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that it is they who are in the driver’s seat, and able to get more out of continuing to be nice to Washington!
The question to ponder is whether there’s a point in the bilateral relations beyond which the Modi regime will not allow itself to be pushed, and won’t budge? There seems to be no such point — to wit, the Free Trade Agreement being negotiated which, reportedly, has all sorts of giveaways and concessions to America. Except, there is a worrying trend for Modi, who has invested so much political capital to stay on the right side of Washington. One of the main pillars of his US policy — Indians and the NRI community in America cultivated as potential South Asia policy influencers, are under assault from Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) support base what with the techie flow channel (higher education visa = green card, Indian IT techie posting = green card) being shut down, is crumbling right before our eyes.
According to sources not far removed from the policy Establishment, the 1994 Manipur cadre IAS officer and Commerce Secretary, Rajesh Agarwal, has surrendered India’s digital sovereignty by succumbing to, what else, US pressure. A draft-Free Trade Agreement (FTA) he has negotiated and awaiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approval, accepts the American viewpoint that India’s “digital trade barriers” are a hindrance to free trade and will have to be done away with.
Nothing in New Delhi ever remains secret for long, and the bureacratic grapevine about the arrangement to further the FTA with the US, is even more revealing. Significantly and, perhaps, with the PM’s consent, where the FTA negotiations with America are concerned, Agarwal reports NOT to his own minister, Piyush Goel, but directly to the Minister for External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Jaishankar, it may be recalled, has engineered the policy of appeasing Trump. And, yes, is the same person who, as Joint Secretary (Americas) in MEA and lead negotiator in 2008 of the 123 Agreement for civilian nuclear cooperation with the US, surrendered India’s sovereign right to conduct nuclear testing and to obtain a tested thermonuclear deterrent. It advanced, in the process, not the country’s interests but the longstanding American nonproliferation goal of restricting India to the low-yield fission weapon threshold.
There’s no end to how much, and how methodically, Jaishankar is stripping India of its strategic independence. The surrender of digital sovereignty now — a generous giveaway to the US, is something that American trade representatives plainly did not expect so easily to obtain. Jaishankar is the Indian government’s expert in waving the white flag before the engagement even begins and, it is hardly surprising that he wrangled the authority to shape the FTA to benefit America. Courtesy Jaishankar, Bye! Bye! India’s absolute right to thermonuclear security and now digital security. Jaishankar can plead that in 2008 he did the Prime Minister’s bidding, and that it was Manmohan Singh who demanded he secure that agreement at any cost, because it would be an economic “Open Sesame” for the country to tap into the wealthy US market and, in the bargain, to reform and liberalise its own economy. Is Jaishankar’s excuse henceforth to be that sacrificing India’s digital sovereignty is what Modi instructed him to do?
Modi and India are not in the same league as Xi and China, of course. But the contrast in the reaction of the two countries to Trump’s economic bullying could not be starker, more different. It reflects in China’s case the “long view” strategic mindedness that has always animated Chinese policies leading to its capture over the past two decades of all rare earth resources outside PLA-occupied Tibet and Xinjiang for use in case the US ever acted up. That time was now, and no sooner Trump issued a ban on advanced software and semiconductor chips to China, Xi cutoff all supply of Chinese-controlled rare earths magnets in particular — central to electric vehicles, the automobile industry and industry in general, and to the production of sophisticated American military hardware, until Trump cried Uncle! The US President’s request for a meeting with Xi is being pondered by Zhongnanhai even as Trump is getting hot under the collar! This is strict reciprocity — an immediate tit-for-tat measure that merely confirmed to Washington that it was China, and not Modi’s India, it was dealing with.
The Modi goverment, on the other hand, quickly fell in line with the ever fluctuating Trump diktat. It bought energy from Russia initially because Washington okayed it. It was misrepresented by Jaishankar among others in the government as India asserting its sovereign right to buy oil cheaply from wherever it is available. Indeed, Trump publicly declared and repeated at the recent ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur that Modi in fact ended Op Sindoor after he threatened India with “250% tariffs”, and how the Indian PM promised to zero out Russian oil imports. Sure enough, the pretence of ‘national interest’ prompting Indian oil buys from Russia lasted only until Trump sanctioned the Russian energy majors Rosneft and Lukeoil earlier this week whereupon the public sector Indian Oil and the private sector Reliance, taking their cue from the government, quickly changed tack and stopped buying Russian oil on a coin. So, the conclusion was right after all that India is suseptible to pressure on all issues and on all counts, Trump’s pressing Modi led to the Indian government terminating the oil trade with Russia.
Trying to cover the government’s tracks on preemptive compliance with the US policy changes, Jaishankar complained ineffectually about the energy import standards being unfairly imposed — China has not been so sanctioned, etc. Boo-hoo! And to squawk about the Ukraine War needing to end so India can resume oil supplies from Russia implying, note this, acceptance of the fact that Trump’s decision is what persuaded the Modi dispensation to sever India’s connection to Russian oil!! So Trump essentially decides who India buys oil from, not India’s national interest! If one part of Trump’s public declaration is correct — that his oil sanctions on Russia ended India’s Russian oil purchases, how can the other part of the same Trumpian statement issued in the same breath — that he forced an end to Sindoor be “arrant nonsense” as senior Indian officials got up the guts to label it some 5 months after the event?
Meanwhile, surprise, surprise, Indian imports of American oil shot up to nearly to half a million barrels per day, making up the projected Russian oil cutoff. The Indian government’s patent inability to look beyond its nose meant that it was not prepared to react by instantly switching its trade, except an alternative market for Indian goods was not cultivated. It placed India in its familiar role as beggar, pettitioning Trump for reduced tariffs and for a waiver of sanctions on Chabahar — the Iranian port central to India’s Afghanistan and Central Asia policy, when keeping this channel open for trade serves the US interest as well. With Washington extending its waivers, the impression of India as a client state was confirmed. Trump then bolted down this impression and worse by saying as regards Sindoor that both Munir and Modi told him that “You should let us fight”!! At a stroke it elevated Trump/US as the entity to decide whether the two countries fight at all, and personally equated Munir and Modi and, at one remove, Pakistan and India! And then cushioned the blow by calling the two countries “tough people”. REALLY!
Whatever the truth, the fact is Trump at once mocked Modi and to, blunt the sharp edge of his mockery, laid it on a bit thick on the flattery front, hoping the Indian PM can be flattered out of reacting badly as well. Trump: “I’ll tell you what, Prime Minister Modi is the nicest looking guy, [someone] you’d like to have as your father” and then added, “[Modi] is a killer,…tough as hell.” [All Trump quotes in Jennifer A. Dlouhy, “Trump says He Threatened 250% Tariffs on ‘Killer’ Modi”, Bloomberg, Oct 29, 2025, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2025-10-29/trump-says-he-threatened-250-tariffs-on-killer-modi-pakistan ]
Flattery works — who should know this better than Trump?! Succumbing to its also covers up for the Indian government’s strategic myopia — intrinsic to its decision and policy making, and is an official trait welcomed hugely by the US, the West, and China who waste no time exploiting to the max.
So the US not only dictates who India buys its energy from, who it can fight and how, but also its geopolitics!
With regard to the FDA with the US, what has Agarwal got in return for India giving up its digital sovereignty, pray? Reportedly, reduced tariffs to the 15% level!? Satisfactory, Mr. Jaishankar?
When Shakespeare’s Richard III had his horse lanced from underneath him at the Battle of Bosworth Field, his lament — “My kingdom for a horse” is apparently taken literally as a negotiating strategy by Messrs Jaishankar and Agarwal — who, between them, have, in fact, given away strategic India for a song!
The Polish sociologist Stanislaw Andrezki aptly described India as a “land of subjugations”, but know this, that in the nuclear-digital age that is upon us, foreign subjugation is actually internalised and mainstreamed in the manner Jaishankar has done in gutting India’s thermonuclear weapons, and now his bureaucratic tool, Agarwal, is doing in kicking India’s digital sovereignty over the side, vide negotiated accords, albeit accompanied by rousing nationalist rhetoric on the sidelines voiced by Modi, Rajnath Singh and assorted others. Cry, the beloved country (the title of Alan Paton’s sorrowful account of his benighted homeland — the apartheid-ridden South Africa, that now fits the 21st century to-date India to a T, but for quite different reasons)!
Agarwal’s resume’ refers to an MA from IIFT (Indian Institute of Foreign Trade) run on subventions from Commerce Ministry. That makes him, unusual for GOI, a round peg in a round hole. But, does he understand even a bit of the digital world he has to have a grasp of? Assuming he does, the trouble is in the talks to hammer out an FTA with the US, he is taking his marching orders from Jaishankar — a generalist with no known specialisation other than international affairs (JNU) but with talent for an aphoristic turn of phrase — useful in a diplomat, but not essential, and a pronounced tilt US-ward, evidenced in his career in MEA. So, lack of domain knowledge bothers Jaishankar little, as long as the negotiation is tending in the direction of the Big Tech Companies — almost all American, which is what Agarwal is meant to ensure.
But what’s digital sovereignty all about?
No country in recent times has been as profligate as India in gifting away the technology space and space for technological growth and development with indigenous talent and resources within the country. The government sector does not seem to be even aware of what’s at stake. Take the example of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) — a single platform for all financial transactions described as a “unique achievement and only sovereign digital ecosystem winning worldwide appreciation” according to one assessement by experts. News reports suggest that NPCI is teaming up with OpenAI — the leading US Artificial Intelligence firm — talk of getting the fox into the henhouse! — OpenAI could then weaponise the platform, unbenownst to NCPI, and discover one day, as Nayara Energy — the Indo-Russian oil refining and marketing company did, that Microsoft hired to provide services, shutdown Nayara operations without any notice! This is but a taste of what may be in the offing by being reckless in allowing big tech companies entry into the Indian milieu. Imagine the disruptive power Washington would wield through the agency of OpenAI over the Indian economy should this collaborative venture take off! The Modi PMO should instruct NCPI to void the deal immedately and kick OpenAI out of its premises before any real harm is done. In fact, no Indian LLM (large language model) under development should be allowed any foreign connection for any reason. And that guardrail has to be erected as of yesterday!
Nayara Energy is but one instance, of the Indian government allowing a noose to be placed around NCPI. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is actually working with Indian government tech incubators to guarantee that the next IP (Internet protocol) model is erected on AWS platform! Talk of lacking any common sense, leave alone displaying tech competence. The US-led West and China, moreover, have been relentless in compromising the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This is no bad thing to happen because under its aegis the Indian government has surrendered “significant industrial policy space”. The threat to undermine it would be enough during this WTO crisis for India to win back this space. Instead, the Commerec Ministry has made concessions on source code access — India cannot anymore demand source codes for any capital hardware purchase, including in a license production deal, cross-border data flows, open government data, compulsory licensing, and asymmetrical access to government procurement — most of them made during Agarwal’s time as Commerce Secretary.
Movement of skilled labour is a big agenda point for Modi to consolidate his electoral hold on the growing Middle Class, but even when the US and European states have conceded this point, it has not stopped Trump, say, from closing the H1B visa channel, or protecting the rights and the physical wellbeing of Indian techies working in America, what with MAGA gunning for them and for any ethnic Indian, in fact. But this seamless flow of skilled labour surely cannot explain, leave alone justify yielding on the country’s “core digital interests”. Rather than using Indian brainpower, as the abovementioned assessment says, “as leverage ” we are actually allowing the US and the West through their Big Tech Companies to pay them with what they most want from India — high-tech manpower hires to assist them in digitally colonising India.
The US is, moreover, insisting on provisions in the FTA that prevent “(1) India from imposing taxes on digital players headquartered in the US, (2) India from leveraging its data advantage and creating national digital champions, including through sharing anonymised government data exclusively with Indian domestic entities, and (3) India from effectively regulating the digital sector.”
How does all of this serve the National Interest, Modiji??
The US, according to those who have knowledge of trade negotiations, “can secure the above and many other [insidious] objectives in the digital sector by getting India to agree to JUST THIS ONE SENTENCE in the trade accord: Both countries agree to grant non-discriminatory treatment to digital services, and suppliers of these services, from the other country.” It cannot be allowed to be inserted/included in the FTA text — and Agarwal better be alert to any variations on this theme being brought into the working draft document.
The homework has already been done by well-meaning Indian entities desirous of protecting the country’s sovereignty and digital space in its entirety that people like Jaishankar have made playthings of. The pity is Prime Minister Modi does not seem to quite appreciate the looming digital danger staring the country in the face. He seems happy to give audience to Sundar Pichai of Microsoft and Satya Nadella of Google/Alphabet in the expectation that these India-origin types will think of India’s interest, when, in reality, these NRIs, as the Indian government, ought to have realised by now are worse than useless in speaking up for India and its interests, what to speak of advancing them.
Recall that with Trump’s punitive policies at a high pitch not a single NRI notable spoke up for India; many of them actually argued that India had a “bad narrative” on Op Sindoor they couldn’t possibly propagate, when the truth is the Indian techies in America are fair weather sailors, happy to board the Indian ship, join in Howdy Modi! kind of circuses in America, but just a bit of headwind gets them into a tizzy and into a “distanced from India”-mode. India owes them nothing. The Nadellas and the Pichais of the world look out for themselves and the US firms they head, especially when the bottomline suggests that “the potential gains of a digital sovereignty framework could be in the trillions of dollars [for India] as compared to a few billions invested [in India]” by these foreign entities.
And if the United States of America is Modi’s great model to emulate, perhaps, the Prime Minister and his minders should look at how the Trump government has moved to impose sovereign oversight on foreign companies, like Tik Tok. It ringfenced it from its Chinese parent, subjected its algorithm use to domestic control/royalties, and confined sensitive operations to ‘transparent’ clean rooms” thus ensuring foreign tech companies “comply with national rules when governments act decisively.”
Ironic then that this is the US that insists the presumably free, independent and sovereign Republic of India not take steps needed to guard its own sovereign digital space and industry in every way possible in the manner Washington has done to protect its digital environment. And, more alarmingly, that this is the United States of America dictating to the Modi government to leave “Digital India” open to “free trade” and extremely vulnerable to American companies, and to other international predators.
The digital peril Messrs Jaishankar and Rajesh Agarwal have deliberately, and with great forethought, put the Indian nation in, suggests that Digital Sovereignty is no part of the Indian government’s thinking on internal or external security. The supposedly hypernationalist regime that Narendra Modi runs in New Delhi is seemingly OK with all this.
The 47th summit of the 10-member ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) and five dialogue partners — India, Japan, South Korea, US, and China is set to begin in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, October 26. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be attending, as will US President Donald Trump. The MEA hopes that the two can meet on the sidelines. What the ASEAN expects to get out of this conference is Trump’s promise to reduce US tariffs.
The Indian government, which has no sense or instinct for US domestic politics or American foreign policy, has in mind something more ambitious. Modi means to use the occasion to turn on his charm and try and put the derailed bilateral ties back on track, and otherwise to convince Trump about the wrong path he has taken by befriending Munir and Company at India’s expense.
This effort has about as much chance of success as a spitball’s in hell!
In fact, there is every reason to expect that Trump will exchange some inanities with Modi, mention their warm friendship a couple of times, and agree with Modi on issues a, b, and c, only to come out to the waiting media and announce that Modi had approved x, y and z, involving matters the two leaders never touched on! And that’s the danger no leader can avoid when meeting Trump. But Modi has lots more to lose than the run of the mill European leaders massaging his ego.
Trump’s trademark diplomatic method of confusing, inventing issues out of thin air, bamboozling the world, and forcing the leader he has lately been with to scramble and backpedal, and generally to be on the defensive, pleading that something else all together was actually discussed. It is as unique as Modi’s equally familiar opening with hugs and embraces that have by now grown stale, lost its element of novelty and surprise. Trump has time and again bet on the fact that India wants more from the US than America seeks from India, and the difference is what, he thinks, provides him with the leverage and the latitude to sculpt a narrative designed to show him as beating up on a difficult and recalcitrant India.
Modi and his MEA minders should ensure that the Indian PM never again agrees to any one-on-one meetings with Trump, even less a joint Press conference — the US President’s favourite stomping ground!
Fiction and sheer invention being Trump’s diplomatic oeuvre, Modi is at a distinct disadvantage with the Western media, and why I have been warning against the Indian PM meeting with Trump alone at any time for any reason. Because that only offers the American another opportunity to make a monkey out of Modi. Trump’s diplomacy was recently on display when he loudly claimed the Indian Prime Minister had promised to terminate all energy imports from Russia when, as the MEA was at pains to point out, Modi had undertaken to do no such thing. On Sept 16, Trump called to offer Modi birthday greetings, and on Oct 22 Diwali Greetings!
No publicly personal relationship has quite crashed and burned as the ties between Modi and Trump did, post-Sindoor, with the latter making it a point to insult the Indian PM and go full-punitive against India and all because the latter would not, pet cockatoo-like or, more appropriately, Field Marshal Asim Munir-like, roll over and parrot to the Press the US President’s worthiness for the Nobel Peace Prize for ending Op Sindoor and, nonsensically, saving the world from a nuclear armageddon!
In retrospect, Modi made the gravest strategic error by calling the White House after the Indian missiles had been fired at the terrorist facilities in Muridke and Bahawalpur on May 7 to inform the US President that the Indian strikes were limited retaliation for the Pahalgam massacre.
Why did Modi feel compelled, besides Jaishankar putting him up to it, to inform Trump at all? The US National Security Agency — the largest most technologically advanced and powerful intelligence agency in the world whose satellites would have picked up the Indian missile firings and relayed it instantly to the NSA processing centre outside Washington DC via the Australian relay station at Pine Gap, outside Alice Springs and, with a time lag of just a few minutes, reached Trump. So Modi was telling him nothing he did not already know. But the act of Modi telling him is what marked India out in the pecking order as a subsidiary power trying to preempt Trump from lashing out. It did not work.
Not sure why Modi feels it imperative to please the US President, when Trump insults and humiliates in return. Because going strictly by his transactionalist tilt, it is Trump’s America that will be hard put strategically to replace India in the Indo-Pacific, to economically find a market as vast as India’s to sell to, and to replenish its STEM talent pool with year-on-year hordes of incoming Indian graduates from IITs and regional engineering colleges that provide state-subsidised education that American companies polish up. Indian talent has fueled the Silicon Valley’s rise and helped the US remain on top of the technology mountain.
And yet it is India and Modi that act the supplicant when they hold more cards than Delhi credits itself with. Trump’s cabinet colleagues are beginning to realise this and why India cannot be bullied into a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) or anything else, or force it away from buying Russian military hardware — more S-400s and possibly also the Su-57 multi-role combat aircraft (after the fiasco the French Rafale turned out to be in Sindoor, leading to whole squadrons being restricted to faroff tarmacs). And why India will continue to buy oil from Russia, soon from the Arctic Sea reserves as well — and Trump can go take a hike! Have you seen how all the loud mouths talking trash to India — Counselor to Trump, Peter Navarro, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, have gone silent?
But Trump is motivated foremost by pecuniary benefits to self and family, and here the burgeoning market for high end luxury apartments/villas with the Trump stamp — the characteristic goldish blingy garishness, offers Delhi direct leverage. The Wall Street Journal the other day carried a newsreport that proclaimed India as the “Trump Organisation’s biggest foreign market for real estate projects”. Trump is raking in the moolah (some $12 million in 2024) for simply lending his name to real estate developers in Gurgaon and elsewhere in the National Capital Region (NCR) — among them Pankaj, Roop and Basant Bansal (and their M3M Group), the Lodha Group, and the RDB Group in Kolkatta, most of them, unsurprisingly, in trouble with the law on charges of money laundering, securities fraud, bribery, tax evasion, and/or defrauding customers.
May be the best way to impress Trump would be to darken the prospects of his family’s 12 new NCR real estate development projects that have been anounced, by dragging these Indian real estate developers deeper into a legal morass and begin, for instance, by restricting the flow of license fees on these new projects to the Trumps. As many investigations have shown, like the Indian developers he consorts with, Trump too has had serious run ins with the law. Better still, the Indian Tax and Enforcement Division, and Haryana state police and other agencies, can begin turning on the heat until these Trump-friendly Indian developers start squealing and, the Bansals, who are supposed to be in thick with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, ask Modi to treat them with kindness, and approach Eric Trump, the President’s son, fronting the Trump enterprise, to have his father talk to Modi for relief that can then be doled out in spoonfuls to keep the Trumps hanging. It will give the Indian PM and government the much needed upper hand.
Security Wise 