Catalytic War? Not quite!

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Strike on the Khamanei compound in Tehran]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on February 19, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu & Modi]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on February 9, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on February 3, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi & a triumphal Trump?]

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

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

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

Trump:

Modi:

The effect of US President’s message:

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

Ramifications of Modi’s message:

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

How not to tackle Trump

Posted on January 25, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi & Trump]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence procurement, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indo-Pacific, Internal Security, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, nonproliferation, North Korea, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, sanctions, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, Terrorism, Trade with China, UN, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons | Tagged , , , , | 53 Comments

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

Posted on January 15, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Rafale]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in arms exports, asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Australia, Bangladesh, China, China military, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, 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 ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indo-Pacific, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons | Tagged , , , , | 67 Comments

Gor is no solution for India-US relations

Posted on January 13, 2026 by Bharat Karnad

[Ambassador-designate Sergio Gor and the PM]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Culture, Decision-making, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Politics, Indo-Pacific, MEA/foreign policy, Pakistan military, Russia, sanctions, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US. | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

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

Posted on January 4, 2026 by Bharat Karnad



[Emperor Selassie addressing the League]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indo-Pacific, Islamic countries, Japan, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Technology transfer, Terrorism, Trade with China, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons, Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 28 Comments

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

Posted on December 21, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[The latest anti-India protest in Bangladesh]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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