The usual, unsatisfactory, inconclusive end to Sindoor. And that too inside of three days of start of military operations! What is equally surprising is how quickly we accepted US mediation, unless the entire Op Sindoor was planned on the basis that after a few days of slinging things around in which the Indian military would be permitted to do as much damage to the Pakistan military as possible, the US would step in with the arm twister of IMF credit of $1.3 billion, to bring Islamabad in line.
In the Deccani Hindustani lingo of my childhood in Dharwad, the Op Sindoor was all padenga, padenga, phoos!
The public rhetoric of our leaders in the aftermath of the April 22 Pahalgam massacre promised something very big — recall Prime Minister Narendra Modi talking of “unimaginable” consequences for Pakistan. So were small time exchanges of drone and missile strikes for three days unimaginable?!! There were NO plans to take the Haji Pir Salient or Skardu in the Northern Areas, or to do anything remotely aggressive other than striking Muridke and Bahawalpur — which broke through the system of self-inhibition, the “psychological factor” that I referred to in the previous post, and showed some political will, established a precedent, and injected a bit of credibility into the Indian threat to treat any and every terrorist incident hereafter as casus belli, “cause for war”. This was fine, but not good enough.
“Saab Erieye AWACS patrolling silently J-10C fighters flying in passive mode PL-15E missiles—the export PL-15E, the domestic variant with over 300 km reach and Mach 5 speed—locked in and fired The Rafale didn’t even know it was targeted until the missile was 50 km away. At that speed, the Indian pilot had 9 seconds. Not enough to react. Not enough to survive.”
The IAF presence over J&K was sparse in 2 of the 3 days. Why?
“Because every time a fighter lifts off, Pakistani radars pick it up. Because the Erieye sees what Indian radars can’t. Because the PL-15 launches from outside Rafale’s threat envelope. Because the Rafale, once India’s silver bullet, has been turned into a $250 million sitting duck.The IAF now flies 300 km behind its own borders.”
It’d be only right to note that while a spendthrift IAF invested in prohibitively priced weapons platforms, like the Rafale, the PAF invested in the “kill chain” inclusive of a few J-10Cs, Saab AWACS and mostly long range A2A ordnance. (With respect to the Rafale refer https://www.epw.in/journal/2024/41/perspectives/strategic-autonomy-national-security.html.) Recall how the Rafale was ballyhooed by Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, CAS at the time of the failed 2019 Balakot strike who, not too long ago rued the fact that he did not have the Rafale for that action.
A highly regarded retired Air Marshal reminded me not to take the stories of US support for PAF’s claims for the IAF Rafales downed except with the greatest skepticism. Absolutely true that the US defence companies are mighty keen to have the Trump Admin push the far more useless and expensive F-35 on Modi’s India and IAF. Even with that caution in mind, PAF’s choices in expenditure are still commendable.
Also because, the PAF has initiated a new method of air warfare with an adjoining country — combat aircraft staying well back in their own air space, firing longrange air-to-air (A2A) and air-to-ground (A2G) weapons with exceptional support. Except, Rafales cost $250 million each. The fleet of 36 is now depleted. This is of larger consequence than the damage done by Indian missiles to frontline Pakistani airstrips and air defence systems. Sindoor has definitively proved that Rafale is an overhyped combat aircraft.
If all the IAF meant to use the exorbitantly priced Rafale for was as a standoff weapons platform, then wouldn’t the Tejas, as I have always been advocating, been as good an aircraft to trigger longrange A2A and A2G missiles, at a fraction of the cost? Will the Indian Ministry of Defence and the Modi PMO even at this late date not rethink the Rafale deal that is in the works to meet IAF’s spurious medium fighter aircraft requirement for nearly 100 Rafales to cost additional thousands of billions of US dollars in hard currency? And will the IAF at least now do the nationalistic thing, save the country a treasure trove of hard currency, and save its flagging reputation, and finally throw off its yoke of imported aircraft and opt for the Tejas instead??? More will be be revealed about the Rafale in the Sindoor ops in the days to come. Time for the IAF, for its own good, to begin distancing itself from this aircraft. (There are very good reasons why no other other major air force opted for this aircraft as my innumerable posts on the Rafale in this blog, suggest.)
Within hours of the announcement of the ceasefire this evening, the Pakistan army frontline units on the LOC opened up with artillery in the Poonch and Rajouri sectors of J&K. This is the Pakistan army the Indian government expects to be actually deterred by the Indian military threat of striking the Punjab heartland, especially in the wake of India being militarily in good condition to capture Pakistani territory in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, but did not? And, this is the Pakistan army that is expected to foreswear terrorism as a tool of asymmetric warfare that has had the Indian army on edge in Kashmir for the last two decades? Well, Good Luck! (Even without the Koran-spouting General Asim Munir, who might become the first big Pakistani casualty.)
The Indian government and military seem to be so caught up in the cycle of petty military actions and outcomes, apparently forgetting Modi’s and defence minister Rajnath Singh’s exhortation to the nation to “Think Big, Act Big!”
Attacks launched at 1:44 AM this morning on nine terrorist targets within Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, including headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in Muridke outside Lahore and of the Jaish-e-Mohammad in Bahawalpur, both located in the Punjab heartland of Pakistan, are significant.
Significant, chiefly because a huge psychological barrier has been breached by the Indian government with precision guided munition strikes, to minimise collateral damage. This strike is something of a climacteric in that the Indian military will henceforth consider militarily engaging with Pakistan in a more frontal manner.
Per a statement by the Indian Ministry of Defense, the actions were “focused, measured, and non-escalatory in nature”; “No Pakistani military facilities” were targeted and “demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution.”
The Pakistani government was, perhaps, distracted by the announcement of a major air drill scheduled for today that accounted for the massed presence of air assets strung along the border leading to the Pakistanis letting their guard down somewhat. It helped mask the execution of the first phase of Sindoor.
Islamabad first claimed downing two IAF aircraft, upped it to three aircraft, and a little later five Indian planes. On the face of it, these claims are an exaggeration; but a couple of drones may have been shot down. The ball is in General Asim Munir’s court. Depending on what’s struck by Pakistan’s in-coming, the 2nd phase of ‘Sindoor’ will be implemented.
For reasons not readily discernible, India has been inhibited in the past in using its marked conventional military edge against Pakistan. It has not fought “wars” with Pakistan to a decision, as happened in 1971. Inconclusive conflicts, and the reluctance of the Vajpayee (BJP) and Manmohan Singh (Congess) regimes to mount harsh and sustained military retaliation after terrorist strikes on Parliament — the symbol of India’s sovereignty in 2000, and on Mumbai in 2008, encouraged General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, to actually believe Pakistan is the military equal of India. And, worse, that India run by “lalas” (the usual Pakistani denigration of Indians) don’t have the stomach for a fight, etc further stoking the myth of “martial races” that the Pakistan army has a large stake in.
The Modi government has finally broken through the Indian state’s own system of self-deterrence, of inhibitions, by striking terrorist havens deep inside Pakistan, giving proof of its intent to physically demolish facilities and installations within Pakistan being utilised in the until now successful use of terrorism as asymmetric warfare, and going well beyond hunting down individual terrorist leaders, which programme too will continue. After all, the Hydra-headed monster needs to have its heads cutoff everytime a new set of heads are sprouted, in the manner Israel has contained Hamas and Hezbollah.
Sindoor has also signalled that India is prepared to escalate if the Pakistan army wants escalation — the choice of the escalatory level being Munir’s to make. The Pak COAS is under the pump. He can believe his own army’s well entrenched advertisements about itself and Pakistan, and choose to go disproportionate. He could order counter strikes on military targets within India, which will surely draw swift and heftier Indian conventional response at every turn. It should rightly open up the possibility of Indian military actions — which hopefully the army is preparing for, to take the Haji Pir Bulge, or even Skardu. This action-reaction sequence could lead to Munir contemplating what Pakistani strategists and commentators have a little too readily, albeit rhetorically, evoked — the nuclear button. Except, in their telling in a nuclear exchange “Hindu India” is destroyed but, magically, the “Land of the Pure” is spared damage!
Munir has no alternative other than to back down. After his vituperative Koran-spouting performance before an audience of Non-Resident Pakistanis the other day, that will mean losing face. But better a lost face, or even a rationalised LOC with Haji Pir and Skardu in Indian hands, than one’s own country lost as irradiated ruins. The fact is Pakistan’s threat of nuclear first use is manifestly silly besides being suicidal. Having brought the proceedings to this pitch, GHQ-R can do little else now than say nothing and lump it. Especially because no one is buying Pakistan’s case of Pahalgam as a “false flag” Indian operation, etc. Had it been otherwise, it would have registered at the UN Security Council meeting yesterday where Pakistan, a temporary member, found other member states openly voicing skepticism about Pakistan’s view.
Still, a Pak army chief mouthing the kind of Gazwaihind-nonsense that Munir did suggests, he is more likely to be deposed by a cabal of sensible corps commanders, prompted by Washington, Riyadh and UAE than that he will be left free to inflict even worse damage on his own country. Munir may want to go down as a ghazi. His fellow generals are unlikely to follow him, faced as they are with no good options but with every incentive to retire to their ill-earned farmhouses!
[And could we have a bit better informed media — PLEASE! Or does the Indian public have to learn from blah-blahing ignoramuses about “Pashtun regiments” in the Pakistan army; so, what next “Sindhi” formations marching through the Cholistan Desert to occupy India to fulfill Munir’s fevered dreams?!!]
[A PAF (ex-Chinese) F-7P taking off from possibly the Lahore-Islamabad motorway]
It is despairing to hear and see a string of former generals, RAW, IB officials and the like, prodded by television hosts, daily emitting a lot of nonsense and hot air about what the Indian military may be planning to do, or should do, without anybody coming up with any definite ideas of how the Indian military should proceed. The contemplated Indian retaliation is, of course, for the heinous killings of domestic tourists on the Baisaran meadow in Pahalgam April 22 by terrorists from the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) groups operating under a newly created and secular sounding nom de guerre — The Resistance Front (TRF).
The situation reminds me of the competitive “yellow journalism” of the mid-1890s one has read about, practised by two American media barons of that time — William Randoph Hearst running the New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer the New York World, each trying to out-do the other with sensational headlines and coverage of the Cuban rebellion against Spanish colonial rule, that eventually prompted US President William McKinley to intervene in Cuba. The story goes that Hearst hired a famous illustrator, Frederick Remington, to provide sketches of the action in Cuba. Remington reached the island state during a leantime and wired back that nothing much was happening in Havana, only to have Hearst famously instruct him to stay put, saying “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war”!
Whatever any one says everyone, including China and the US, wants a fight and the situation is being media primed to deliver it, if only to see what Modi will do. The irony, of course, is that Modi’s rhetoric about “This is not an age for war” that he freely ladled out to Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestinians, has come back to bite him. For too long Indian leaders have gotten away with moralising about war only to have war or threat of war on our borders reveal them as poseurs. Jawaharlal Nehru got his comeuppance in the 1962 War. It remains to be seen if Pahalgam will be a climacteric for Modi.
Except, a lot of time has been wasted by the PM and the MEA trying to drum up international support for prospective Indian retaliatory actions which, by the way, has not been forthcoming. As reported in the media, the Indian government failed to insert a bare mention of “Pahalgam” in the UN security council resolution. It shows up the meagre returns on Modi’s activist diplomacy.
India does not need anybody’s permission or support to retaliate harshly against Pakistan for its asymmetric terrorist warfare undermining national security. Get on with planning and successfully executing punitive military actions to capture the Haji Pir Salient and Skardu (described below in broad brush terms) and don’t stop until these geostrategic goals are achieved — even in the face of international opposition. The trouble is India has never shown the spine to stand up for itself and its interests.
The Indian media is not actively promoting war, it is true, but is doing the next worst thing — speculating inanely about what India may be planning to do. Something is bound to occur because, well, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is caught between — in the circumstances — his moderate rhetoric, “India will identify, track, and punish every terrorist, and their backers” and his more bombastic, almost Trumpian-sounding but inherently vaporous threat, of visiting something “unimaginable” upon Pakistan. Rising to the bait, Bilawal Bhutto, following in his grandfather’s footsteps, promised a river of blood should India deny his country the Indus waters — slightly scaled down rhetoric, I suppose, compared to then Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s thundering on about a “thousand year war” with “Hindu India” at the UN in the wake of the 1965 War.
General Asim Munir, Pak COAS, has suddenly gone silent after his incendiary speech, in the Zulfikar vein, to well-heeled nonresident Pakistanis (NRPs) last week at an event in Islamabad — a counterpart of the annual Indian jamboree — “Jan Pravasi divas” except with anti-Hindu/anti-India venom, befitting a progeny of a backwoods mullah from UP who ventured a hijr across the Radcliffe Line. There were copious quotations from Koran — which apparently Munir is well versed in. The better educated among the NRPs sitting on sofas were plainly bemused, some of them even managed to look appalled, by their slightly unhinged-sounding army chief holding forth in recognizably “butlerish” English.
But there was more drama in New Delhi yesterday when Modi, in a meeting with the armed services chiefs of staff did something the latter did not expect. Cleverly, he not only shifted the onus and responsibility of choosing an appropriate retaliatory response for Pahalgam on to their professional shoulders — a decision that rightly is in the political domain and for him and his cabinet alone to make, but also of its success or failure.
Apparently, the TV cameras were allowed into the room after the PM had authorised the military brass to do what they think best. Because, the CDS and services chiefs looked sort of ashen, perhaps, because they suddenly found their metaphorical plates piled high with too much “political” stuff, besides having to alight on a set of significant military actions. It is the proverbial hot potato a politically adept PM has tossed to them.
No matter what happens or does not happen by way of the usual slow to get started Indian retaliatory reaction and Pakistani riposte, Modi wins (in terms of domestic politics). He can point to the armed services chiefs being afforded the freedom to choose whatever military actions they thought would have impact; should they succeed, he will be praised for respecting the military and doing the right thing in leaving it to the professionals to garner success. Should the chiefs fail in their choice of telling action, or worse there are operational snafus and failure looms, or still worse — an Abhinandan sort of embarrassment recurs except this time there’s no return of pilot(s), the CDS and the service chiefs will get hung by their lanyards. But Modi will be in the clear, even if he is met with derision and, internationally, loses face.
Our chiefs of staff and military commanders, the great Sagat Singh (as GOC 17 Mountain Division beating the Chinese PLA into submission in 1967 and retaining the Nathu La Pass, and as IV Corps commander helilifting his units across the Meghna River to ensure the “surrender in Dacca” in 1971) aside, have been conspicuously hamhanded in conceiving and conducting actual offensive operations. To wit, the failed 2019 Balakot aerial strike misorganised by IAF. It will be interesting to see what the CDS and the armed Services chiefs come up with this time that will have a salutary effect on the pesky but professional Pakistan army, considering they are working with Modi’s carte blanche.
Assuming all the commotion created by the two sides has not dissipated the tension, and the situation is being propelled towards some kind of reckoning, there’s consensus at least that India cannot any longer be subjected periodically to excesses by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists, that this cycle has to be broken, and a price imposed on Pakistan.
Unfortunately, the less visible option Modi would have liked to chose is what he voiced — identifying, tracking, and punishing the terrorists, and their backers, along the lines of apprehending Tahawwur Rana. That will take a few years. This is so because the Indian government has gotten into a bad habit of reflexively bending its knee to US, China, any big power. And because US President Donald Trump, who says he is “running the world”, declares that India and Pakistan would resolve the tensions in their relations amicably and without ruction, and also because US Vice President-cum-India’s damaad, JD Vance, has urged a “responsible solution”. OK, then!
But the Indian military chiefs have been hoist by Modi with the popular demand for retribution. Because holding the Indus Water Treaty “in abeyance” means nothing. Abeyance is not abrogation. It merely means in practical terms that India will be more forceful, first, in exploiting the three eastern rivers — Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, before turning its sights on the three western Rivers — the Indus and its two tributaries — Chenab and Jhelum. So, denying Pakistanis even “a drop” of any of these waters is not a practical proposition in the here and now, and cannot be engineered out of thin air in the near or even mid-term. Constructing the dam infrastructure and system of subsidiary dams, etc on the eastern rivers to divert them fully to flow through India — assuming it is at all, practicable, will take India some two decades to realise. In all this time, the western river waters will be available to Pakistan. So, that is hot air and gas, and won’t silence the Indian public baying for blood.
Many militarymen have taken to writing, and most of them end up waffling, having little to offer. For instance, take the former army chief General MM Naravane. The title of his piece — “Pahalgam attack deserves retaliation, India can borrow from US, Israel playbook” (https://theprint.in/opinion/pahalgam-attack-deserves-retaliation-india-can-borrow-from-us-israel-playbook/2600084/) promised more than the article delivered. “Let [Pakistanis] be on tenterhooks for a while till they start jumping at shadows”, he advised. “Meanwhile, we must build up global support through political, diplomatic and military channels of communication, for our retaliatory measures for when (not if) it happens, which could be in multiple domains, both kinetic and non-kinetic. It is time for India to bare its fangs and not fall prey to calls for restraint, or third-party assurances. India can always borrow from the US or Israeli playbook and draw support from international law which allows for such responses.” There was no elaboration on what aspects of the Israeli and US “playbook” Naravane wishes the Indian armed forces to replicate. In short, hot air!
Lt General HS Panag (Retd), the former Northern Army commander, is more no-nonsense in his analysis and recommendations. So, I was surprised that he set no definite goals for the incursion he recomends across the LOC (https://theprint.in/opinion/dont-act-hastily-keep-pakistan-on-the-edge-then-strike-decisively-repeatedly/2600446/). Like Naravane, he is against India “hastily blowing the war bugle”. Fine, India is doing just that, taking its time. Next, Panag suggests prosecution of “a short and intense limited war below the nuclear threshold [to] be exercised preemptively when the adversary least expects it” with the aim of pushing back the LOC “0-15 km to threaten strategic objectives before nuclear weapons come into play [and for] All launch pads used for facilitating infiltration [to] be captured.” This, he argues, “would force Pakistan to sue for peace as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor would come under threat.”
Good he mentioned the “0-15 km” depth to which he’d like Indian forces to penetrate into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Considering that almost all of Pakistan army’s cantonments and concentration areas are near the international border and the LOC, debouching from them will be easier for Pakistani army units to affect than for Indian army formations which have to travel longer distances with their trains of equipment. Panag, apparently, just wants an advance across the entire LOC front with no specific purpose in mind. In the event, instead of a “limited war” we may have a replay of the 2002 disaster — Operation Parakram, with all the eyeballing ending in a bored mutual withdrawal after Vajpayee called it a day. The worst that can happen with Panag’s sketch of a plan is the Indian army will be stuck at the Zero end of the “0-15km” depth he plans to occupy! So, no that won’t do.
Pravin Sawhney, a former Major (Artillery), who publishes a defence monthly, contends problematically that the Pakistan military (1) “will outmatch Indian military in a war by a convincingly huge margin”, (2) “has much stronger strategic level which directly impacts the operational level of war”, (3) has the battlefield edge owing to the Chinese Beidou satellite constellation it relies on in cyber warfare and in munition guidance and, more generally, in electronic warfare, air defence, drones, and owing to induction of certain Artificial Intel systems, courtesy CENTIAC (Centre of Artificial Intelligence and Computing) under the Pak Air Force, which also enjoys a better pilot to aircraft ratio.
Actually, by my assessment, the only real military edge Pakistan enjoys is in the quality of its fighter pilots. This has historically been the case.
The hot-headed Pakistanis have afforded us strategic opportunity. Time to exploit it. Reacting to India’s changed stance on the Indus water treaty, Islamabad announced a “suspension” of the 1972 Simla Accord, rendering the Line of Control (LOC) in J&K a live ceasefire line that can be changed by either side using military means to advantage itself. In this context, does it not make sense for the Indian army to cross it to achieve certain specific aims?
The first thing to do is to put the Indian army’s holding formations on alert along the international border from Gujarat to Gurdaspur to threaten imminent action at anytime anywhere across it.
Having thus nailed the Pakistan army to static defence and inviting it to risk moving additional units to the LOC, the Indian army can take the Haji Pir salient last captured by Indian 1 Para in the 1965 War but returned to Pakistan for Chhamb that the Indian army lost to Pakistani forces (and lost it again in the 1971 War, for good).
The Haji Pir Salient (HPS) is a fat thumb sticking into India, and integrating it into the Indian J&K is eminently doable. There are only so many defensive forces the Pakistan army can push into the salient. Engaging them from three sides, with Special Forces pinching off the salient on the Uri-Poonch Line with this line quickly reinforced and firmed up with induction of Indian forces, will compel the Pakistani forces inside the salient to fight, to fight to get out of the encirclement, or to face destruction in detail. Remember any territory lost across a ceasefire line remains lost. HPS could be a cauldron, a killing field. An Indian Haji Pir would at once rationalise that part of the border and cutoff the easy south-of-Pir Panjal route used by ISI to infiltrate its jihadis into the Valley, as they did the LeT/JeM cadre into Pahalgam.
A similar lightning foray can be made in the far north to take Skardu — HQ, Forces Command, Northern Areas, Pakistan army some 40 kms across the LOC. Skardu in Indian hands will rationalise the line of control to the Saltoro Muztagh and India’s Siachin Glacier, and weaken a Sino-Pakistani linkup in the area proximal to the Shaksgam Valley gifted by Ayub Khan to China.
Hard geographic-geostrategic objectives-endpoints have to be articulated for any operations the Indian military undertakes; just advancing on a broad front across the LOC as Panag recommends ill-serves the cause Modi has set the Indian armed services. Capture of Haji Pir and Skardu are the sorts of consequential actions the military brass tasked with doing something of lasting and visible effect, should prioritise.
By the way, there’s not a spitball’s chance in hell that either or both of these operations will trip the nuclear wire primarily because it is disputed territory across a ceasefire line. Secondly because Pakistan becomes extinct in an all-out N-war. And thirdly, because the pampered Pakistan army officer cadres have too much to lose and cannot afford such a nuclear exchange, all their threats being so much hollow posturing that Western thinktanks and their ilk inject with credibility to advance American interests in South Asia.
But, there are two things, the Modi government and the Indian military simply cannot allow to happen once the action starts. Firstly, India should under no circumstances succumb to pressure from Washington, Beijing, UN or anybody else and stop its operations short of taking Haji Pir and Skardu and otherwise substantively altering the Line of Control. It is this LOC alteration that will have a permanent effect on GHQ, Rawalpindi, and profoundly reorder its thinking, outlook and approach to J&K. Asim Munir and fellow-believers can keep rehashing the “Two Nation Theory” in the aftermath of Haji Pir and Skardu in Indian hands, should the General survive such Indian successes.
The fact is, after suspending the 1972 Simla Accord, Pakistan is in no position to stop India from hugely changing the LOC!
The terrorists have been identified, their antecedents ascertained, and the J&K Police Intel presently are involved in tracing the family connections, if any, of the above four attackers in Pahalgam who killed 26 tourists. The fact that Home Minister Amit Shah rushed from Delhi to Srinagar — even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided instantly to not cut short his state visit to Saudi Arabia, is the surest sign that no instant retaliation is in the offing. Because there’s simply no established system of instant retaliation. So the latest terrorist incident will be treated as sui generis and by the time investigations are completed, conclusions reached and the nature of punitive action decided on, the zest for a hardbitten response will have dissipated.
Predictably, “high level meetings” in Srinagar and in New Delhi have followed and, for all intents and purposes, little else will happen in the near time. That’s for sure, except more yacking.
Several generals featured on television news programmes talked of a menu of options available to the army and the government. To be realistic they are referring to the physical wherewithal for action — equipment, etc. It does not, however, amount to actual and ready plans for retaliatory action or ready target sets to be distributed to strike teams. There are no such plans to choose from and no prepared list of targets to go after, or set up for counterstrike/elimination. There was no instant retaliation after the December 13, 2000 terrorist attack on Parliament — the symbol of India’s sovereignty when even the US the usual pressurer of India to do nothing, expected an Indian reaction. Or after the seaborne attack on Mumbai in 2008, when US pressured the Manmohan Singh regime to do nothing. So India’s not reacting is, unfortunately, quite normal.
The Pahalgam incident is, of course, a Pakistan army-ISI operation propelled by COAS Munir’s notice soon after he took over from General Qamar Bajwa that the Pakistan army would give up its “passivism” on the border. That should have sounded the tocsin and the intel agencies and the state and central police agencies as well as the army ought to have gone on alert, which did not happen. Munir’s speech in Rawalpindi a few days ago, where he reiterated the basis of the “Two Nation” theory and Pakistan’s claims on J&K should have set our antennae whirring. This Pahalgam massacre that followed, marked a revival of terrorism with a bang that caught the Indian state unawares and flatfooted.
The ISI chose a strange time for a terrorist strike though. The US government arranged for the 26/11 terrorist attack planner Tawwawur Rana, a Canadian citizen, to be repatriated to India. Vice President JD Vance is visiting the country and this terrorist strike will, therefore, stay in his mind and when he returns to Washington he is likely to be amongst those who will argue with Trump for facilitating or, at least not hindering, an Indian military strike deep enough inside Pakistan to blow up, say, the LeT HQrs at Muridke — because that’s the level of response that is now called for. But, it is doubtful the Indian government will muster the boldness for such response. The former Pak foreign minister, Mahmud Kasuri, recalls in his memoirs that after the 26/11 attack, US senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham visited him to sound him out on the possible Pakistani reaction to India mounting a retaliatory strike against Muridke. Naturally, he hinted to the Americans that the action-reaction sequence could escalate to the nuclear level. That apparently dampened any enthusiasm the Manmohan Singh regime had for striking Muridke, and that was the last anyone heard about a like response.
Sure, in recent times, several terrorist leaders have been assassinated in Pakistan, But these are apparently not salutary enough for Munir and his gang who seem determined to stir things up because he calculates that Pakistan has less to lose in comparison to India with a healthy economy, etc. And that this fact alone should deter New Delhi from mounting a harsh response. The threat of Pakistan initiating nuclear weapons use is the stock backup card, Munir thinks, will work.
Have long maintanied and detailed in my books why the N-threat by Pakistan is hollow — the exchange ratio does not play out in GHQ, Rawalpindi’s favour. This scenario has been gamed so many times in so many locations and the results are the same: For the loss of two Indian cities, Pakistan will cease to exist, in the Spenglerian sense, as a social organism. Moreover, I have argued, it will never be allowed by the generals to get to that stage because such a war will zero out the 30% of the Pak economy controlled directly or indirectly by the army/military which has allowed Pakistani officers to live out prosperous retired lives. So, there’s great incentive for them to not cross the nuclear rubicon — reason why I have contended India can actually afford to conventionally escalate, to up the ante. That requires the Indian government to hold its nerve, and that is a big ask.
Further, as a cradle of Islamic terrorism, Pakistan is in the crosshairs also of the US Nuclear Emergency Support Teams (NEST) comprising Special Forces trained to take out terrorist state nuclear arsenals such as the Pakistani nuclear inventory. Something that special units within the Israeli Mossad are geared to do as well. May be it is time the Indian government actively cooperated in particular with Israeli agencies to contain this threat.
Modi’s statement from Riyadh could result, as in the past few years, in covert operations to bump off this or that Lashkar-e-toiba operative or field commander residing within Pakistan. But such plans take time to evolve and execute.
In the mean time a durable solution has to be considered. Assuming the Kashmiri youth in the Valley have jobs, gain from tourist traffic and generally don’t want to risk the attention of the army’s Rashtriya Rifles/Intel groups, and like the above identified perpetrators of the Pahalgam killings, are foreign born and, in any case, staged out of Pakistan/POK, then the Israeli border solution suggests itself as the remedy. It is a bloodyminded but high-tech solution worth pondering: An electronic wall of sensors — movement sensors, thermal imagers, audio sensors along the length of the LOC activating high rate of fire machine guns placed in overlapping arcs of fire along the border. Anyone trying to sneak in from the other side will immediately cue the machine guns in that area to range in on the intruders for immediate targeting-to-kill. In other words, these machine guns slaved to banks of sensors promise automaticity of fire response and almost certain death to intruders. This is what Israel created on the Gaza border, but were surprised when the Hamas countered it — which they were able to do only because the Israeli security forces were lulled into complacency. As were the Indian security forces in J&K today.
The machines guns firing first, for humans to ask questions later is, perhaps, the tandem the Indian government agencies need to implement. You intrude, you get shot. Good solution.
Sure enough, US President Donald Trump did what he promised he’d do — upset everyone’s economic applecart, including America’s. His “reciprocal tariffs” across the board on every country trading with the US makes no economic sense. But he is delusional enough to believe that disrupting the world trading order will somehow find America at the top at the end of a period of turmoil that he has loosed on the world. All the US Treasury Secretary had to say (to CNN) was that, instead of instantly retaliating, the affected countries should “take a deep breath” and do nothing, certainly “not escalate” by imposing more tariffs on American goods and commodities.
In one sense, it may be seen as the last gasp of a creaky old great power making its exit with a bang!
Charged by the Trump Administration of imposing an average tariff of 52%, the counter US tariff on India is 26%. China’s figures in the same categories are 67% and 34% over and above the 10% already imposed on Chinese exports to the US. America’s Asian partners are not spared. Japan’s 46% tariff rate draws 24% tariff; and corresponding figures for Israel are 33% and 17%, South Korea’s 50% and 25%, and Taiwan’s 64% and 32%. It proves, what I wrote in a post a few months back, that Trump is no one’s buddy and America is no one’s friend.
Taiwan is almost equated with China for tariff punishment, which is curious considering US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a ‘secret memo’ to the Pentagon brass disclosed by the Washington Post, that preventing Chinese takeover of Taiwan was the priority even if this means “assuming risk” in Europe. This last premise owes much to Trump’s pally relationship with President Vladimir Putin and his willingness to throw Ukraine overboard if that secures — and this plays on Kremlin’s historic apprehensions about China — a US-Russian entente to stop China — perceived as the more onerous threat to both the US and Europe.
Actually, such a concert serves India’s strategic purposes well, and New Delhi should stoke this policy tendency in Washington and Moscow as much as it can. With the US and Russia militarily stretching China in the east and the west on the Eurasian landmass, Southern Asia and the subcontinent will get less attention from the PLA, which’s in India’s national interest.
Yes, but what about Taiwan? With extortionist tariffs, whether intended or not, crippling the Taiwanese industry and economy, Trump has happily ensured, writes ‘Typhoonmax’ — a reader of this blog in response to the previous post, that China need never “invade Taiwan i.e. [Trump’s] tariffs will probably encourage the Taiwanese to cut a Hong Kong style ‘one China two systems’ type reunification deal with Mr Xi.” Exactly right, and the Goumindang (KMT) opposition party of the late Generalissimo Chiangkaishek that for a very long time ran the “nationalist” government in Taipei, may facilitate such a transition because, well, it too claims Taiwan is part of China it hopes to once again rule!
Such a denouement would be bad for India, because strategically, this’d permit Beijing the luxury of taking its eye off Taipei and redeploy its military forces now massed on the Fujian coast, to its “Western theatre” — Tibet and Xinjiang where Chinese strategists espy the most potent threats not just from India, owing to the disputed border, but also from Tibetan and Uyghur (in Xinjiang) secessionist sentiments and from the spread of Islamic terrorism.
The insurmountable problem for India — no great revelation this — is the phenomenal rise of China. Any visitor to China — and I have visited that country several times, cannot but be astounded by its spectacular and visible economic and technological growth. Shanghai is an obvious showcase for everything that’s gone right for China. Looking at Pudong from the Embankment in Shanghai is verily to see the future. Haven’t been there — but Thomas Friedman in the New York Times column, has talked up the newly constructed Huawei campus in Pudong as the centre of technological advances for the world.
Experts who have studied China’s rocketing rise attribute it to the Communist rulers from the beginning investing in STEM disciplines — science, technology, engineering, mathematics primary school level up, when Jawaharlal Nehru was building the “new temples” of India — the Bhakra Nangal Dam, etc. but in the education sector, the IITs and IIMs that have produced the feedstock for the US and West European economies — providing efficient engineers and managers for their burgeoning post-World War Two economies. It was a lovely fit. But Nehru paid no attention to primary schools in the countryside and in the cities and to raising the quality of education provided. So these “schools” other than remunerating the “teachers” who pocketed their pay and went home, offered such absymally bad education, virtually no formal education, they became assembly lines for producing rank illiterates, who joined mofussil “colleges” and graduated in illiteracy, and then hankered for sarkari jobs, and once in them lowered the quality of governance! It was, in effect, an unvirtuous cycle of scam sustained on public monies. But surely, Nehru did not intend all this to happen. But in a manner of speaking, he did encourage precisely the seeding of the urban talent pool groomed in IITs/IIMs for technology serfdom, different only in degrees from the indentured labourers from eastern UP, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu the British colonial government shipped off to run England’s lucrative plantation economies in the Indian Ocean (Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Seychelles) in the Pacific (Fiji) and in the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago). It made the Indian state and society incapable of technology creation and innovation on mass scale. Upskilling this sea of illiterates to service an AI-laced technological future is plainly beyond the Indian state’s capacity. What happens now? Who knows!
But sticking with the coolie stream seems to be still a policy priority. Look at the disproportionate political-diplomatic capital expended by the Modi regime in opening the H1B visa (and equivalent) route for swarms of would be IT coolies! The fact is IITs and IIMs have not produced technology inventors and innovators. All that the great software factories of Bengaluru and Cyberabad — Infosys, Wipro, TCS, et al, make money out of is by writing code — their bread and butter — which is glorified coolie job, that is now being done better and immeasurably faster by Artificial Intelligence. May be Indian engineers will become skilled in wielding the AI to, what else, get work abroad.
But the troubling and worrying question is this: Is there any original software written in India? The minister in-charge realised this only a couple of days back that there’s none! Even more where’s a ‘Deepseek’ kind of revolutionary technological invention? China seems to have these inventors and innovators coming out in droves. They are adding high-octane fuel to the already astounding pace of progress by that country. India is near zero in this realm of technology creation what with a bureaucracy-heavy state system configured to squelch innovation and technolgical advancement. For all the rhetoric — look at the state of tech MSMEs in India. And then look at the prime tech entity in govt sector — DRDO, the screwdrivering specialists, and one begins to appreciate how badly off the country really is in this sphere! Clearly, the necessary technology creation/innovation ecosystem is absent in India. But, how is it that the even more, bureaucracy-wise, turgid “state socialism with capitalist characteristics” ideology and system in China is now the source of endless and astonishing new technologies?
It may be because, as I have repeatedly mentioned on this blog over the years, Indian culture. It has refined the science of abstraction — most famously in conceiving the mathematical symbol “zero” and the decimal system. Great kings and empires in India, however, created no monuments of practical use. There was no tradition of science application. The zero and the decimals did not fetch the natives of this land engineering advances. It had to go via the Arabs to Greece and to spread to rest of Europe for its engineering possibilities to be actualised.
The Chinese culture on the other hand was high on the applications of knowledge — they invented just about anything one can think of — paper, paper money, gun powder, seisomograph, wheelbarrow, compass — oh-look up Wikipedia! And the merit-based civil service — the Mandarinate! Ruling dynasties were known by the massive public works they constructed — the Great Wall started in the 7th Century BC and built over the next 2,000 years — think of it!, the Grand Canal on the Yangtze River and associated system interlinking rivers, the oldest of these dating back to the 5th Century BC! Indian kings and that lot left behind nothing to remember them by — oh, sure, Taj Mahal, what good did that do for the people? In fact, the only enduring public work one can think of by an Indian ruler is what’s come to be known as the Grand Trunk Road built by Sher Shah Suri in the 16th Century, connecting Kabul to Bengal.
There’s a reason Indians are culturally attuned to not being good at creating anything practical from the knowledge they have — the caste system, which looks down upon those who work with their hands. I remember Sam Pitroda telling me in the late 1980s that he hails from a family of carpenters — work that won his father no respect. He somehow made it to America where working with his hands he designed electronic switching systems and got patents that made him rich! So culture, in effect, has been an obstacle to modernity, to the establishment of a flourishing industrial sector even. Of course, the caste restrictions are breaking down, and it is a good thing too, but not fast enough to make a difference. The other aspect encouraged by the British was to make servants of Indians who for a small but regular pay would do anthing for the firangi, serve anyone for a consideration! The Raj turned Indians into servitors, yes, and also dependents with the state portrayed as maibaap. Hence arose a nation of servile babus, from the ICS at the top to everyone down to the lowliest sweeper — who looked for security in his regular monthly pay. This was also the main reason for the military labour in the Mughal times shifting over to serving the East India Company and later the British Indian Army. There was nothing ‘martial’ about any of it.
China was never weighed down by such cultural impedimenta. It however needed a Communist apparatchik to release the brakes on the people’s aspirations — and this the great helmsman, Chairman Dengxiaoping, did with some common sense directives to unshackle the Chinese genius for craftsmanship and commerce, and build up the economy that way. Of course, he had America helping out by opening up its market and transferring military tech to firm up the PLA — all this as part of the Cold War game of turning the power balance against the Soviet Union. In the sheer mass and the drudgery of the Communist system in China, Deng’s successors still found that the country needed to catch up with the tech front rankers. So, the next thing they did was fast-forward the process by simply getting the very best brains from all over the world via its “Thousand Talents” programme which has spawned its adjunct — “Thousand Young Talents” programme for Chinese youth which is now advancing the economy with technology inventions and innovations.
And here’s India, which has yet to find its Deng.
I may have mentioned this but one of the pioneer theorists of quantum computing and one of the really heavyweight algorithm writers who once worked in our nuclear programme and then in the soul-crushing confines of CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), Indore, took up the offer from an elite Chinese University after he failed to find Rs 3 crores here at home to set up a centre for algorithm writing. Mind you, he approached, I know, everybody from the highest in the govt and IT industry but got nothing from them except hot air and pat on the back. The Chinese so valued him, he was given his own newly established centre to run manned by the best and the brightest among Chinese STEM students for him to train. His annual remuneration package? $1 million (in hard currency) as virtually pocket money + beautiful house in the elite part of town + expenses! This was some 10 years ago. He may be making multiples of that money now and has the satisfaction of seeing his work manifested in high-tech devices and technologies. May be it is coincidence, but it is after he shifted there that China launched the first operational quantum tech satellite in the world!
But, I digress!
Sure, there’s no comparison between India and China. Each country has had to work through its set of problems. The Indian government works on the principle that there’s all the time in the world to do things, the slower, more evolutionary, the better — a legacy of the Indian freedom movement leaders being mostly lawyers working the margins of legal minutiae and comfortable with the system the British left behind that produced more paper than good decisions or good governance. In China, the revolutionaries with their peasant vigour uprooted the old system more thoroughly, and gave themselves a chance.
Realistically speaking, India is no match for China economically and technologically, and will never be because there’s no hint of radical reforms animated by an Elon Musk-ian type of “move fast, break things”-approach to making over the government and the improbably sluggish Indian system generally. So, besides hoping for a fruition of the Russian-US nexus strategically to contain China, is there anything India can do to brighten its prospects at a time when Trump — whom Modi painted as his good friend, has dumped on India? The Modi government, as has been suggested, can ease the entry of Chinese companies — the tech leaders in their fields — to set up factories in India with Indian investors, and repatriate profits but with the proviso that inside of 3-5 years all the components that go into the product lines would be manufactured here.
But economic cooperation should be no reason not to try and do China in, in terms of aiding and abetting two causes — those of a “Free Tibet” and of an independent Uyghur East Turkestan Movement, and in strategic military field by proliferating Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles to Southeast Asian countries and Agni SRBMs and MRBMs at “friendship prices” along with any other Indian produced military hardware, excluding nothing. That’s what secret understandings between states are for!
The greatest flaw in the Indian institutional strategic mindset is that it is not strategic, because it is too set along linear lines. If India trades with China, it cannot also undermine it in various military ways, etc. China believes in just the reverse– that good economic relations is no excuse for not screwing the adversary in every other respect. The twain don’t meet, and is the reason why the Indian government learns nothing and the country is supine, keeps getting it in the neck everytime.
One other lesson the Indian government refuses to learn. Trump has done India a favour by proving once again that he doesn’t care for India any more than he worries about — name any country, Uruguay! But the tariffs have done us one big favour — it is showing the way for Modi to “free marketise” Indian agriculture — get the Indian State out of the farmer’s life and business, scrap the minimum purchase price for agricultural produce, etc., and he can blame America for holding India’s feet to the fire! Once they become competitive, these same wealthy farmers (from Punjab and Haryana) who sit on well-fed dharnas at the slightest pretext and are as far removed from the subsistence agriculturists all over the country, as China is technologically from India, will thank Modiji for allowing them to find markets in the far corners of the world. This is potentially the only gain!
But, much worse, may be in the offing. Trump may cajole or coerce Modi into buying high-priced, ridiculously useless military hardware, like F-35 combat aircraft. Buying more C-130s/P8Is/C-17s is one thing. The Modi government, which made a humungous mistake by buying Rafale, will compound it many times over if it goes in for the F35 — it will be 100s of billion of dollars (in life time cost) down the gutter. It will, mark my words, spell the end of the indigenous Tejas programme — 1A, Mk 2, AMCA, the end of the IAF as a serious force, and of India as an independent and sovereign variable in the global balance of power system.
[IAF Chief, ACM AP Singh, taking COAS, Gen. Upendra Dwivedi, up for a Tejas spin]
The 42-squadron strength the IAF has flogged as its desired combat fleet size was originally spun out of the 50 squadron fleet recommended by the Committee chaired by JRD Tata in the wake of the 1962 War — fully 63 years ago, when ordnance was delivered by manned bombers. The 50 became 35 for want of resources before getting jacked up to 42 in the 1980s.
A 2-front wartime deployment plus reserve in the context of the PLAAF and PAF may have been the basis for settling on the 42 number. In reality though, it is just a number that’s gone up and down and up again — a function of the country’s finances, where it has been stuck for the last 35-odd years. But it is treated by the IAF as some kind of divine revelation, not to be trifled with. So, everytime any Chief of the Air Staff opens his mouth, it is to complain, issue dire warnings, about the “capability gap” attributed to the strength of the combat aircraft fleet declining to 30 squadrons, what with the phasing out of all MiG-21s from service by this year end, and the other fast obsolescing aircraft — Jaguars, Mirage 2000s and MiG-29s, that will need, the IAF brass claim, replacing inside of a decade, etc. The all-purpose panacea? 42 squadrons!
Sure enough, the recently elevated Air Chief Marshal AP Singh mouthed the same words. With print and television media faithfully relaying the CAS’ concerns and the talking heads on TV screens and press commentators echoing this oft-repeated nonsense — and this view, as intended, as always got a multiplier boost. The IAF has been very effective in getting what it wants by repeating this “procurement” spiel over the years, and pressuring the government into making ill-advised buys.
It led to the deal for 36 4.5 generation Rafales that Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed for during his April 2015 trip to France despite the by then deposed defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s well known doubts about this aircraft owing to the escalating unit cost, up from Rs 526 crores negotiated during the UPA government’s time, according to the Congress party, to Rs 1,670 crores, or over three-fold increase.
Further, the 36 Rafales in the Indian air orbat have nowhere met the the 70%-75% availability standard agreed on vide the Inter-Governmental Agreement of 23 September 2016, or 27 of the 36 Rafales being available at all times. This standard was demanded of Dassault because the frontline Su-30 MKI has serviceability rates of 55%-60% — the reason why Parrikar, by far the best defence minister the republic has ever had, suggested indigenously producing the Su-30MKI to meet IAF’s needs, and as the only imported component in the future fleet, with the Tejas (1A, 2, AMCA) as the bulk force aircraft. No wonder Parrikar was a bane, and pain in the you know what, for the IAF!
Whatever the Rafale deal has not done for India and the IAF, it did for the French aerospace industry — rescued it from insolvency. I had warned then — read my posts 2012 onwards! — that the initial 36 aircraft would be the wedge for additional 114 Rafales to fill IAF’s requirement of medium role fighter aircraft (MRFA). And also for the 26 Rafale Marine to equip the Indian aircraft carriers. The pitch for the naval version revolved around the commonality of spares and service support with the IAF Rafales. The flyoff of sorts then is pro forma, because now the IAF will argue it already has the servicing infrastructure for Rafale aircraft, and the Service would like very much to be less diversified to ease the logistics nightmare it has all along nursed!
In the event, there will be a “competition” for the MRFA deal — featuring versions of some of the same aircraft that have been in the running in the last 30 years — Lockheed F-21 — a differently designated F-16 Super Viper configuration, the Swedish Gripen, Russian MiG-35/57, and the Boeing Super Hornet F-18, that will be staged mostly for show. Unless…
Unless, the Modi government — like the preceding Congress and BJP regimes, again bends to Washington’s will. Except, Trump now will impose his terms, arm-twist Modi as he did on the tariffs issue getting New Delhi scrambling to accommodate. The question is which aircraft choice will he impose? Who knows why he publicly pushed Modi on the F-35 Lightning. May be he has bought stock in Lockheed! No US President has been so brazen in profiting from his office — it is almost refreshing! But he could go, equally, with the Viper or the Hornet. Whatever, India stands to be struck by Lightning or stung by the Viper/Hornet, and guess what gets hurt? Yep, the indigenous Tejas Mk 1A, Mk 2, and the advanced medium combat aircraft. The country cannot afford to buy yet another lot of foreign aircraft and, at the same time, develop and fly the Indian-designed, home-made Tejas family of fighter aircraft that could be the backbone of the country’s defence industry into the future. It can have one or the other.
Oh, yes, we have all heard IAF Chiefs crying crocodile tears over Tejas and how it is so dear to the service’s heart, how much it is committed to it, etc, etc. But, how, only for the nonce, the option of buying an imported combat aircraft off the shelf and assembling the balance of the requirement in India — preferably by private sector companies, will strenghten the Indian defence industry that, regretfully, cannot be avoided! It is a practised line that has been dutifully voiced by all CASs after PC Lal in the early 1970s. It was Lal who offered this explanation for choosing to kill off the advanced successor — the HF-71/72 to the HF-24 Marut, just so he could buy the British Jaguar. The Marut was created by the legendary World War Two Focke-Wulfe designer of the main Luftwaffe fighter FW109, Dr. Kurt Tank. The HF-71/72 was the product of the uber-talented Dr. Raj Mahindra, who resigned from HAL after IAF chose Jaguar, and with him into oblivion went the last purely Indian designed combat aircraft until the Tejas. The irony was IAF pilots flying the Jaguar vouched for the HF-24 as the better, more stable, low level strike aircraft!
That tragedy is endlessly repeated by the institutionalised shortsightedness of the IAF. The current chief, AP Singh, the former chief test pilot in the Tejas programme, and his successors, may end up doing to the Tejas 1A, 2, AMCA what Lal did to the HF-71, except it will be death by a thousand cuts. Meanwhile, the usual kind of defence minister — a military-wise illiterate, will read from whatever script is given him, and from one end of his mouth praise Tejas and, from the other end of his mouth, talk of meeting the “urgent” need of the IAF with imports. Jai Ho, Atm Nirbhar Bharat!!
The merciless tag-team beatdown of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by the US President and Vice President, Donald Trump and JD Vance, in the White House was unprecedented in the annals of history. Such humiliation in another era would have led to war. The new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, called it “deliberate escalation”. In the present time, when Ukraine cannot fight without American arms, and Europe while showing solidarity with Ukraine cannot do much by way of rescuing Kyiv’s armed forces from backing into a military cul de sac, it is the humiliated Zelensky who has had repeatedly to bow and scrape and say how thankful he is for all the assistance rendered his country by the US. It didn’t work.
US Arms aid was cutoff, leaving the former Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Dmytro Kuleba to wince and write (in the New York Times) that “It is now Europe’s war”. Europe cannot, of course, mobilise its defence industry overnight, but even so war against whom — Russia? Except, Trump followed up the Zelensky encounter by halting all US offensive cyber operations against Russia. If such incentives and his promise of trade and investment and possibly a place for Moscow in the European community induces Russia to detach itself from China, then a very grand strategy is indeed afoot to isolate China, one geared to minimising its influence and power in Eurasia and in the Indo-Pacific. This is all to India’s good — and this is the prospect the Indian government has been offered to get it to commit more forcefully to the Quad. In that situation, NATO serves no useful purpose.
But a junked Atlantic alliance giving way to a European Treaty Organisation (ETO) of the kind hinted at by Emannuel Macron of France, or a “coalition of the willing” mooted by Keir Starmer of the UK, both of which are proposals the Chancellor Merz would happily support as a counterpoint to the fading NATO. But either or both of these groupings will do what? Range against Russia backed by the US? Meanwhile, the European Union, quite literally kicked to the curb by Trump hopes that by joining India, it can add to its international weight by association. This explains the visiting EU Commission’s pleas to the Modi government to forge comprehensive links. All these parallel developments offer tremendous opportunities to New Delhi, the possibilities boggle the mind. It is that kind of inflection point.
So, why the hesitation? Because Prime Minister Narendra Modi still sees benefit in putting great store by the US. This much is evident from the to-do list he returned from Washington with, which he is bent on realising. A lot of things mentioned in it are good for India, like deregulation, opening up the agricultural and dairy sectors to competition from American exports, and clarifying land and labour laws that remain untackled and have been huge impediments to the country’s quickly replacing China as a manufacturing hub and deal with rising unemployment. Other things in it, such as increasing the purchases of high value defence hardware — depending on what’s for sale, may not meet Indian military needs. And the push to get India to buy a whole bunch of Westinghouse AP 1000 enriched uranium-fueled light water reactors is also problematic. If such power plants are to be in the private sector as commercial enterprises, with combines of Indian and foreign companies investing in power complexes, then this option needs every encouragement. With the Adani group mustering the resources to get in big in the nuclear energy business, it is a welome sign. Because this will free the government to finance the building of 700MW CANDU and breeder power stations. There’s after all an insatiable hunger in the growing Indian economy for energy, and excess of power is good and, therefore, more nuclear plants the better.
But here’s the rub. With the Modi regime intent on propelling export trade but also a more diversified exports basket not dominated by software and Information Technology-related goods and services, India could quickly find itself at odds with the US, and more fully in Trump’s tariff crosshairs. And, as he has understood after his US sojourn, Trump is so not sentimental and would as readily screw India if he thinks it has complied inadequately with his demands, as he did Canada and Mexico by raising across the board tariffs (as of last night) of 25% on their exports.
Trump has proven he is no respector of friends or of the sanctity of security alliances. But he respects power, and therefore, is reverential, subservient even, with Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China, who will brook no rhetorical nonsense from him, even less hurtful actions. Beijing promised immediate retaliatory tariffs to match Trump’s additional 10% over and above the previous 25% tariff hike that kicked in as of yesterday. And Canada and Mexico were not spared, in part because Chinese companies set up factories in these neighbouring countries to avail of trade on concessional terms under the North America Free Trade Agreement. Now NAFTA too stands trashed.
If Trump all but kowtows to Moscow and Beijing, he is equally admiring of recklessly defiant leaders who can do America harm. Like Kim Jong-un of North Korea who, it may be recalled, called Trump’s bluff in 2018 of “fire and fury” by aiming his IRBMs at Guam — the large US base mid-Pacific, and then testing intercontinental range ballistic missiles just so the next time Trump acts up, he can aim them at Los Angeles! Kim’s chutzpah made Trump eat his own threats and fetched him a deferential visit from the US President who makes foreign policy as he goes along and by his impulse of the moment! The proof? Trump sacrificed a draft agreement on February 28 which was there for the taking that, in effect, gave away the entire store of Ukraine’s mineral reserves for America to extract as reimbursement for the $350 billion worth of US arms Trump claims was delivered to Kyiv over the past three years of its war with Russia, just because, well, he felt like humilating poor Zelensky.
So, it is clear what works when dealing with Trumpian America — Power. Fair enough. That’s the way international relations have always worked. What’s new is the almost gratuitous pleasure Trump takes in beating up on lesser friendly states just because he can!
India does not have the kind of power that makes Trump go weak in his knees. But India boasts of two things of unmatched strategic value — its geographic location dominating the Indian Ocean Region that the US simply cannot do without if it means seriously to take on China. And, economically just as important, its vast market. These are powerful leverages India has so far not used to get what it wants by way of advanced technology, say. New Delhi should use the Indian location and access to its market more aggressively, doling out a little access at a time in return for good behaviour and friendly US policies. Instead, Modi and his predecessors, Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, have gone on bended knees to Washington, pulled their punches, and tried desperately hard not to give offence even when American policies, such as on nuclear nonproliferation, expressly targeted India.
The next time Modi is summoned for a “working visit” by Trump, the Indian PM should ask him to come over for a visit, instead, without fanfare to sort out issues. His ministerial lackey, S Jaishankar in MEA, can speak softly and wax rhetorical about “multialignment” or whatever else he thinks fit to dilate on — it is of little account. But the Prime Minister himself when meeting Trump should be hard as nails, not nice, when making it plain that there can’t be a compartmentalised US approach to India — Washington can’t be accommodating in one area and adversarial in another. And that he has been voted to power to further India’s interests, not America’s. And India would be compelled to put the bilateral relationship on the backburner if it finds its interests or sovereignty in any way undermined or impugned.
And, in summits with Trump or any future US President, he should conduct his business in Hindi, forcing the US to use interpreters, thus affording the Indian side the leeway to back out of commitments subsequently deemed as unwise — over “language differences”. This is the secret behind the consistent success of Chinese negotiators — they always use Mandarin, even as MEA and GOI negotiating teams generally give away the store speaking English! (For example, Jaishankar surrendered the country’s sovereign right to test its nuclear weapons in order to secure the ill-advised 2005 civilian nuclear cooperation deal with the US.)
But such a hard stand is never taken by Modi (and Jaishankar). They seem happy receiving a few pats on their backs for this and that from Western leaders, who view it as an Indian negotiating weakness to ruthlessly exploit. Varied Indian interests are not cohesively advanced also because of the Indian government method of functioning in silos, which meshes with Washington’s compartmentalised policy outlook. Each ministry and department of government acts as a sovereign entity, with its own singular view of the national interest and how to pursue it! Policy coordination is rare. In his decade in office, Modi has not addressed, let alone rectified, this basic structural-procedural problem at the heart of Indian policy and decision making, which is an immense liability when it comes to dealing with foreign countries. In tackling the US, it can result, more often than not, in self-goals.
Modi should also be aware of one other pitfall of meeting formally with Trump that the Zelensky episode highlighted — never again agree to a joint public press conference that can be turned into a media tamasha and, at any moment, into an occasion for Trump to put the Indian PM on the spot (as he did the last time by announcing the offer of the F-35 aircraft) or, if he feels like it, publicly insult him, upbraid him, or make fun of him.
[Family meet in the White House, or serious business?]
The Indian Prime Minister’s “working visit” with Donald Trump went off script in a major way now and again. As expected, Narendra Modi was publicly manhandled. In a bid to embarrass the visitor, Trump gleefully related to the media the Indian leader’s discomfitted reaction — “No, no, I don’t like that” — when told by the US President he would tariff Indian exports out of the American market if New Delhi failed to comply with his wishes, and made sure Modi would lump it. Whether he was adequately advised by S Jaishankar and his MEA on how to tackle Trump or not, the PM hoped to revive a measure of bonhomie from past years to help redirect the punitive threats. That went for a six and some!
Trump also pushed the F-35 as the priority defence item to peddle despite the lack of any serious Indian interest in it. After all, the Service’s procurement strategy was plain enough to all. Once the 36 Rafale buy went through, it was viewed as the gateway for more Rafales filling the 126 MRFA (multi role fight aircraft) requirement, making the F-35 redundant. Still many senior airmen nurse the view that 2-5 squadrons of F-35 can serve as sort of a bridging solution until the local advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA) , which reportedly is at the “metal cutting stage”, becomes available a decade or so from now.
Those who instinctively go ga ga at the remotest possibility of Western, particulaly, American military hardware in Indian colours and that includes all of the Indian press, TV, and social media, should acquaint themselves with just how much of a costly headache the F-35 is proving to be for the US Air Force (and for the 19 other air forces) flying it, and why. They could read, for instance, the April 14, 2024, report on this aircraft by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). Stealth — it’s prime attribute is not a problem. But everything else (propulsion system, cooling system, thermal management system, spares availability, etc.) apparently is!
The US GAO Report concludes that “The F-35 fleet is not meeting most of its performance goals, including those for availability and for reliability and maintainability, according to DOD and contractor data. We have reported on the performance of the F-35 fleet, especially aircraft availability, across several GAO reports. We have consistently found that the F35 fleet is not meeting its availability goals, which are measured by mission capable rates (i.e., the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions), despite increasing projected costs.”
With just about anything that can go wrong regularly going wrong with it, this plane spends more time in the hangar than in the sky. Moreover, to-date some eleven F-35s have gone down in malfunction-related accidents worldwide. The F-35, in short is, if not a dud, than far less of an operational asset it was expected to be. By the way, with a price tag of $110 million, the plane currently costs nearly $40,000 per hour (twice as expensive as the Rafale) to fly, and $6.8 million annually to “operate and sustain” (as calculated by the USAF for reduced flight hours!).
So far, over a trillion US dollars have been invested by the US government into the F-35 programme, making this aircraft the costliest that America has ever produced with no end to the rising sustenance costs. That’s an awful lot of money and is the reason why Trump is determined to flog it to friendly foreign countries to recover some of the sunk cost. But cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness are not Trump’s concerns. He cares only to rack up a sale for the US defence industry. Made aware of the IAF’s reputation for preferring over-priced foreign armaments and of the Indian government’s policy of using arms purchases to improve bilateral relations, Modi was an easy mark. Trump teed up the India sale and tried to force Modi’s hand with a public announcement of the offer of the plane during the latter’s visit. It will be a disaster if this aircraft is allowed into the country’s fighter fleet. But should that somehow happen, the IAF chief of the day will have to carry the can, and have a lot of explaining to do.
On to “Muska chaska”. [To give credit where it is due, this phrase tripped off the tongue of my friend, Dr V Siddhartha, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, 2009-2010, and irrepressible wit!]
Yes, folks, we are getting the Tesla EVs, likely imported China-produced kits — the unkindest cut — from which the vehicles will be assembled here. Modi can mitigate the effects by tasking the defence public sector units that have done little else but screwdriver this and that for 60 years, to do the same with the Tesla. It will leave the better managed, more energetic, private sector defence industry to do the heavy lifting for a change, and prove how much better they are at innovating advanced technology and manufacturing military hardware of every description. Musk angled for Indian-assembled Tesla cars enjoying tax and other concessions the Indian government reserves for foreign companies investing in more complete manufacture of their products in the country! And that may have been the point of Musk’s motivation for meeting with Modi in the White House with Elon’s numerous children in attendance.
Modi’s intent was more obvious — it doesn’t hurt to do favours for the Number 2 in Washington or, as he is referred in some circles “co-President” — a word coined to get the Donald’s hackles up, and speed up a divorce between two ego-boosted persons which everybody expects will occur sooner rather than later. The terms Musk sought are not that big a thing. But if Modi and his advisers expected that pacifying Elon would help moderate Trump’s position on retaliatory tariffs, etc. that hope was short lived.
In fact, Trump followed up his meeting with Modi by doing something more gratuitous — deliberately roiling the political waters for Modi by publicly ranting about the misuse of the taxpayer’s money and holding up the $18-$21 million USAID grant to India to increase Indian voter participation as evidence of US government waste. Except, this sum turned out actually to be assistance to Bangladesh — something Trump was surely briefed about before he created trouble for Modi. Trump, moreover, did not budge an iota on the counter tariffs issue, but put the Modi regime under the pump. If Modi ever thought Trump gave a damn for him, for India, or for Indian interests, he should have been disabused of it by now.
The result was that a pressured Prime Minister did what he should have done immediately and on his own after he was elected in 2014 to implement his election promise — “less government, more governance”, announced the convening of a Deregulation Commission. The problem is such a Commission presided over very likely by some retired finance ministry babu will do little of any consequence in deregulating the economic landscape and leave the country exactly where it is now where the old system of interminable decisionmaking and graft still prevails and the system will only slouch towards genuine and farreaching improvement in the “ease of doing business” area.
Trump’s threats also prompted more urgent action by the Modi dispensation. A Committee was convened to ascertain from all ministries the list of things they allowed imports of, how much of it was of US origin, and what concessions to offer to Washington in terms of goods, like Bourbon whiskey and Harley Davidson motorcycles, where tariffs could be safely reduced with minimal hurt to local industry and agriculture. Such measures won’t satisfy Trump though, who is demanding virtually open access to US agricultural and dairy products to the Indian market — a political time bomb for Modi because of its domestic economic repercussions at the grassroots level.
Worse, Samsung, Motorola, and other topline manufacturers who switched to producing smart phones, automotive parts and ancillaries, and other quality goods in India for export to the American market after Washington’s nudging them to “friend shore” their production and supply chains as alternative to China, now find themselves up a creek, their products attracting the Trump tariff. The fact is Trump has said he’d rather transnational companies that produce all the stuff they sell to Americans to relocate to the US and make them in America and, in the process, increase jobs in the US and government revenue.
It puts Modi and India between a rock and a hard place, as it does a number of other countries, most notably South Korea and Thailand that are in the same rocky tariff boat. It reminds everybody — as Ukraine and the NATO European states are discovering in another context, the wisdom in the famous Kissingerism that it is dangerous to be America’s enemy, but fatal to be America’s friend!
But, this is exactly the path Modi has taken over the last 10 years — believing that playing by American rules, closing in with Washington, will gain for India a vantage point in global politics and economy it cannot otherwise secure. But, it is for a reason that Europe and the most powerful state in it, Germany, after nearly 75 years of US tutelage, wants out. The victor in recent German elections, Friedrich Merz, of the right-of-centre Christian Democratic Union party, has called for “independence” from America — think of that! — as his foreign policy priority. It is in this context that it was good to have a former ambassador in Moscow, DB Venkatesh Varma, actually ask in an op-ed for something I have been advocating for a long time — to stop India’s slide towards US proxy status, reminding his readers that “proxies always end up as the doormats of history”.
It is astonishing to witness how easy it has been for Washington to drive New Delhi’s foreign policy and economic agendas, and to see just how pliable Modi is and his sidekick, Jaishankar, always was. The proof of this was in Modi’s unwillingness to go toe to toe with Trump and exercise the leverage this country has. The PM could have told Trump in the clearest language possible that it is America that CANNOT do without India’s strategic location and helpful policies to militarily contain China in Asia, which may or may not be the US objective, and that US, Europe, and the rest of the world will have to EARN their access to the vast Indian market that will soon outstrip the Chinese market in potential customers, but he did not. Myopically, such market access is being given away to the US, UK, et al, by the Commerce Minister Piyush Goel for few substantive returns.
Then again, there’s no telling when Trump will cut a deal with Xi Jinping for a G2 kind of arrangement for America and China to rule the world. Indications of this happening is why I have argued for reversing the trend in the last few years of weakening India-Russia ties per US dictates, because of Moscow’s inherent fear of a revanchist and powerful China reclaiming all territory east of the Lena River in Siberia.
Instead, we saw a disconcerted Modi and Jaishankar returning from Washington, doing things Trump bid them do. President Volodymyr Zelensky may have overestimated Ukraine’s strength and staying power in warring against Russia but at least he stood his ground and won the world’s respect, however hopeless the task of protecting his country’s territorial sovereignty may have been from the beginning. But Modi is erring seriously in underestimating India’s strategic and economic value, and his habit of reflexively kowtowing to US, Russia and China, is disturbing and will end up selling India short.
There’s not an inkling anywhere in the media here about Narendra Modi’s “working visit” Feb 12-13 with President Donald J Trump — meaning there will be no state organised hoopla, piping of the visitor to the White House, etc. There’s business to be done and Trump is ready to shove the Indian PM into the corner. From what can be gleaned, there seems to be quiet confidence in Washington that Trump will, as he has in the domestic realm, have his way in the external world as well. With the Japanese Prime Minister Shiberu Ishiba standing unhappily by his side, Trump announced that trade would hereafter be conducted by America on strictly “reciprocal” basis with all countries. So Japan will be unable anymore to draw economic benefits as a treaty ally.
Modi is next in line to have his arms publicly twisted. Because Trump made it a point at the same press conference to first explain that hereon it will be tariff for tariff, and then to list the, primary targets. “I think that’s the only fair way to do it that way nobody’s hurt. They charge us, we charge them. It’s the same thing, and I seem to be going in that line as opposed to a flat fee tariff.” The old system with different countries having specific US tariff regimes to negotiate are over. The threat to impose tariffs on all imports was no empty campaign rhetoric.
Under the Reciprocal Trade Act that the US Congress is readying, foreign countries, Trump said in a campaign video, “will have two choices — they’ll get rid of their tariffs on us, or they will pay us hundreds of billions of dollars, and the United States will make an absolute fortune.”
“If India, China, or any other country hits us with a 100 or 200 percent tariff on American-made goods, we will hit them with the same exact tariff. In other words, 100 percent is 100 percent. If they charge us we charge them — an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff, same exact amount,” he stated at the press conference with Ishiba.
But where India is concerned, what is Trump really after?
It is clear India has disappointed the US Department of Defence and the strategic enclaves generally — the biggest supporters of a close relationship, with its standoffish attitude to military cooperation to obtain which Trump in his first term even coined the phrase “Indo-Pacific”. Other than hosting and participating in the bi-annual multinational Malabar naval exercise, New Delhi has done precious little to join the other Quad States (Japan, US and Japan) to strategically encircle and hinder China from realising it’s globe-girdling naval ambitions. In lieu of permitting the stationing of US carrier task force at an Indian base and otherwise to stage and embark American forces for operations in the proximal regions, which the Modi regime considers politically infeasible, it’d have been enough, many senior Indian naval officers in on the Indo-US policy dialogue claim, had the Modi government defined India’s strategic task and contribution to be, say, to actively and relentlessly press and pressure the Chinese naval forces west of Malacca to give the PLA Navy a pause.
Instead, Modi and his foreign minister, S Jaishankar have tried to once again pull off the old Indian diplomatic trick of playing the ends off against the middle and gaining from the willingness of major nations to afford New Delhi the necessary leeway to do this. Except, striving to keep so many balls in the air forever has made for a loopy foreign policy, especially because it has confused the US, China and Russia, in the main, that they are all equally the ends and the middle! These Big Three are nevertheless convinced they are being played. But the space India has exploited is precisely because the US and Russia are not willing to jerk India by pulling on the reins. That is, until now.
Trump is determined to end this, some experts here consider, artful Indian shilly-shallying. How much he succeeds will depend on whether Modi is willing to stand up for India’s vital national interests. The odds are — and this will be borne out by the outcome of the working visit — that like his predecessors and per his own record of two terms, he will succumb to Trump’s armtwisting, wishing all the while that he had the more manipulable Kamala Harris to deal with.
The main issues are these: Inadequate Indian military inputs into Quad to restrict China in the Indo-Pacific, large arms purchases from the US, the Russia arms and energy supply connection, and the Chabahar port in Iran at the centre of India’s North-South corridor project to attract Central Asian trade and commerce as alternative to the China-Pakistan economic corridor, and Tehran as a counterweight to the overwhelming sunni Muslim power in West Asia.
For all these issues Trump will push America as the answer.
He has already indicated he wants India to buy a whole lot of armaments from the US — most of them old hardware, with the potential Indian purchases seen as a means for American defence companies to clear their inventories of antique hardware discarded by the US and Western militaries that even Eastern European states are unwilling to accept as grant assistance. India in effect will part with tens of billions of dollars in hard currency to obtain a tech-wise incapable force. Recall the deal that fetched India the M-777 light howitzer that’s giving the Indian army no end of trouble? And the EMALS — electromagnetic launch system that was prioritised for Indian sale since 2015 and would have gone through had New Delhi not momentarily lapsed into common sense and rejected the 3rd carrier the Navy was gunning for at the expense of the nuclear-powered attack submarine. (Refer my May 2015 post — “US defence bait is potent but impractical symbolism”, https://bharatkarnad.com/2015/05/29/us-defence-bait-is-potent-but-impractical-symbolism/) Well, the Pentagon is preparing a list of more such items, with the Stryker nuclear battlefield combat vehicle at the top. Enamoured by this platform that its US counterpart, incidentally, opted out of, the Indian army will be hard put to find a role for it that is commensurate with its cost what with the availability of better more economical local options. (See my post “Stryker?! When local options are available”, https://bharatkarnad.com/2023/11/13/stryker-when-local-options-are-available/ )
For the Russian Smersh S-400 air defence system, Washington has long offered the less effective Patriot-3. And Trump has been touting American shale gas and oil for energy deficient countries relying on Russia, which alternative source Petroluem minister Hardeep Puri has already said the government is cottoning on to. The only question that remains is when will the point be reached when Moscow decides its interests are more effectively served by joining the Chinese bandwagon of arming Pakistan to the gills with first rate weapons systems that could paralyse India militarily because, truth be told, it won’t take much.
For the Chabahar port that India has invested in for strategic reasons and as the gateway to the sea for Central Asia, Trump will naturally bring up IMEC (India-Middle East Economic Corridor), which if chosen will leave India with no alternative or fallback communications line or geopolitical leverage.
If the Modi government had even the barest strategic sense and, more importantly, the guts, gumption and the will to stand up to Trumpian America (or, China for that matter), he would reiterate to Trump in the plainest possible terms what Jaishankar may have told his minions that concessionary terms for Indian exports of manufactures will accelerate China’s decline as the global workshop, that skilled Indian talent helps the likes of Elon Musk and the US to retain the technological edge even if at India’s expense, that Russia is both India’s and US’ friend and strategically helps by distracting the Chinese military at the Siberian end and that, in any case, India did quite well with Russian arms and can make do with them, once again should the ties with the US go south — a warning Trump cannot airily disregard.
As for the larger geopolitics, inclusive of Chabahar, India-Iran relations and Indo-Russian relations, Modi should have one response: An iron commitment as India’s contribution to Indo-Pacific security to hereon be militarily proactive vis a vis the Chinese Navy in the entire oceanic expanse west of Malacca, leaving two aircraft carrier task groups of the 7th Fleet out of Yokohama and its air complement to blunt the PLA Navy and its plans for the Taiwan Strait and the East Sea. Such an undertaking will immediately address Pentagon’s peeve about India doing less than nothing to help contain a galloping China, and to persuade Trump to let India be.
About allowing more Indian skilled talent into the US, the less Modi talks of the H1B visa the better. Everybody and his proverbial uncle in the leadership circles in the US and the West has about had it with the Indian PM’s pleadings to let in more Indian engineers and science grads as a way of pleasing his middle class voter base. The US’ intake of Indian STEMers will be whatever the American economy and system requires. The US is in a position to absorb what it needs because the best and the brightest from all over the world aree attracted to the promise it holds out. Instead of doing to the Indian government system what Trump is doing in Washington — taking an axe to the bloated government rolls, Modi is busy continuing to rely on the existing govt structure to deliver on his campaign rhetoric. Good Luck with that policy!
Because countries like Vietnam, that are following the Trumpian route to making the govt more receptive to the private sector, have already stolen a march over India, and will be beyond India’s ability to catch up with in the manufacturing sector. Time, therefore, for Modi to stop pushing the H1B stuff and regain a bit of self-respect for the nation. Or, there will be more humiliations in tow, like the C-17 returning the illegals in chains to Amritsar.
It is never too late for a pushback to Trump’s bullying. But that will require erecting guardrails for the India-US relations — something I have been advocating for several decades now (lately in a December 2023 post — “India needs to erect guardrails in its relations with America, https://bharatkarnad.com/2023/12/02/india-needs-to-erect-guardrails-in-its-relations-with-america/). It is what Jaishankar and his cohort in MEA are frankly incapable of doing, because they are all — virtually to a person — personally invested in good relations with America at any price, at any cost.
Security Wise 