Modi talks national interest protection, but India surrenders digital sovereignty in FTAs and ignores trade imbalance favoring America — what is happening??

Posted on August 4, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi and UK prime minister Kier Starmer]

When Sir Thomas Roe presented himself in the Mughal Emperor Jehangir’s court at Agra in 1614 as the ambassador of Elizabeth I of England, he did so on the condition he would not observe the rituals of paying obeisance — all the bowing and scraping, to the Badshah. But Roe was an effective enough salesman to have his social transgressions tolerated, because in next to no time he came away with a royal firman permitting the English a trading post in Surat. Apparently, Jehangir didn’t think much about allowing the firangis an economic toehold on the subcontinent. Had he foreseen that small measly presence being parlayed by Britain in time and by strategem into the Raj – the crown jewel of its worldwide empire and the Pax Britannica that followed, he might have had second thoughts. But early 17th century was not exactly Marshall McLuhan’s global village, and inconceivably long distances and a remote kingdom “saat samandar paar” seeking to buy spices, etc. would have been seen as affirming the status of the “Great Moghul”. So Jehangir may be excused his inflated sense of self-importance, and ignorance of geostrategics.

But, what is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s excuse for gifting India’s sovereignty to Britain 411 years — read that again, four hundred and eleven years — later, this time in the digital realm and, once again, by way —what else— of a trading arrangement? Now it is not spices but sovereignty over source codes and the ever-growing mountains of accumulated and aggregated uniquely Indian government data that foreign countries covet, and the sovereignty over which the Indian government has agreed to surrender to Britain as part of the Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement (CETA). So what Modi has sacrificed, in effect, is the country’s digital security and sovereignty.

Seeing the wide, self-satisfied, smile of commerce minister Piyush Goel as he signed CETA even as his British opposite number smirked (or did I imagine that?) like the Cheshire cat in Alice’s Wonderland, whose smile remained even as the feline disappeared, it is plain that neither Goel nor the so-called trade “experts” in his ministry have even a smidgeon of understanding of what “digital sovereignty” is, or comprehend the enormity of what they have so breezily given away. But giveaways, as I have time and again mentioned in my books and other writings, are an Indian government standard. So, what’s new? Goel is a minion of little importance, but he took his tasking orders from the PM. So it is Modi who has to answer for imperiling and compromising the nation’s digital future.

Ironically, around the time Goel was claiming a “gold standard” for CETA and asserting that no sensitive sector was compromised — by which he just meant agriculture, GM foods, Modi in his Varanasi constituency was waxing eloquent about swadeshi and dilating on the global economy, which he said, faced “multiple uncertainties and an atmosphere of instability. In such a scenario”, he declared, “countries across the world are focusing on their own interests”, before exhorting everyone to “remain vigilant about our economic interests.”

Either, Goel has not got the message, or he is doing his master’s bidding. If it is the latter then it suggests that neither Modi, nor anyone else in the vast Government of India, quite has the hang of the digital world, and how the PM’s talk of zealously protecting India’s “economic interests” and his minister’s making India-generated data about everything (every little digital transaction, digitized bank account data and digitized bits of personal information of a billion and 400 million Indians however gathered) a universal commons, as it were, where any country can graze and mine data for its purposes, are contradictory policies. And with Goel & Co. formally conceding access to Indian “government data” and opening up government procurement to the British, will the European Union, the United States, Japan, and whichever other country seeks a free trade agreement be far behind in demanding similar consideration?

Indian government procurement contracts at the central, state, and local levels worth some $750 billion annually are now opened to bidding by foreign companies — a more deleterious development for local industry cannot be imagined, but here we have the Modi regime permitting it! This subject has been dealt with in previous posts.

This post is about the two other issues: First, digital sovereignty, and secondly, the quite astonishing negotiating error of not including major streams of transfer of India’s wealth to America by the Commerce Ministry when negotiating an FTA with the Trump Admin. After all, what is trade but the transfer of wealth from one country to another.

But first, digital sovereignty. It has two components — “source codes” and “digital data”. Source codes refers to the software behind all goods and services. “The most surprising giveaway”, write Smita Purushottam and Parminder Jeet Singh in an op/ed — “What has been missed is India’s digital sovereignty”, The Hindu, Aug 2, that everybody in government ought to read, “is on India’s sovereign right to seek ex-ante access to the source code for foreign digital goods and services, even for those deemed sensitive.” (Ex-ante, is a Latin phrase denoting predictions and forecasts about future events, and with reference to CETA means that India cannot insist on source codes for anything the country may buy from the UK even though software is integral to nearly all products and services.) This, as Purushottam and Parminder point out, is “a 180-degree turn away from [India’s] steadfast stand in the World Trade Organisation”.

The source code issue in defence is exemplified, for instance, Dassault Avions refusing to part with the source codes from the Rafale combat aircraft that the Indian Air Force and navy have bought at enormous expense to the exchequer (at last count exceeding $35 billion). No source codes means India cannot integrate its missiles to this combat platform. Why has the Modi government not insisted on source codes as part and parcel of the multibillion dollar deals? Perhaps, Paris was aware for many years that New Delhi was prepared to cutout the source code issue from its FTAs , as now proven by CETA. Who knows?

Purushottam is a former Indian ambassador to Switzerland and founder of a remarkable little organisation — SITARA (Science, Indigenous Technology, Advanced Research Accelerator), comprising a team of domain expert volunteers in the forefront of pushing indigenous technology to an Indian government and military inclined, at the drop of the proverbial hat, to “buy foreign”. I know of no other diplomat who, in retirement, has done more substantive work in the nationalist cause. And Parminder is arguably the leading expert on digital sovereignty in the country. Their views are known to the government. Both of them should have been an inalienable part of the Commerce Ministry teams negotiating the FTAs, but are not.

Incidentally, the US, recognizing that security, regulatory and law enforcement imperatives require source codes, reversed its stand on source code prohibitions. Washington likewise backtracked on “granting equal and non-discriminatory access” to government data (which in an earlier era represented “government transparency”) to foreign countries in its FTAs. The Modi government, in its wisdom or lack of it, has taken an exactly reverse tack to what America has done even when such modified position grievously hurt the national interest.

But the Modi regime — flowing against the current — reversed itself , for no sensible reason, on the source codes and access to government data issues thereby centrally endangering India’s digital sovereignty and, principally, national security. It has created a new vast vulnerability from what was an extraordinary position of strength — its massive government data bank generated within India that the UK and other foreign countries will now be able to exploit at will. “It is incomprehensible”, write Purushottam and Parminder “why India with intention to become an Artificial Intelligence (AI) super power” would accept in principle that government data “is not a sovereign resource.” Facilitating easy foreign access to this data will, they warn, “erode India’s competitive advantage” in using its own data to create Indian AI products. Such as its own large language models. And further, that foreign states with access could easily weaponise the massive Indian information bank against India.

After all Artificial Intelligence is nothing more than machines discerning patterns in mountains of data — the larger the data pool the better, at phenomenally high compute speeds, to provide options to the decision maker in the corporate world, government, and the military.

Providing further evidence that Goel and his Commerce Ministry babus are a bunch of reckless dunderheads, they agreed to further consultations with the UK government on “free flow of data” and “data localisation” — the two most contested issues in the AI field, and denotes they write, “a dangerous regress and visible vulnerability” with regard to the country’s long held positions. Again, the US as the leader in the AI field along with China, has withdrawn from propagating these issues, even as India heads blindly into digital bondage because, as Purushottam and Parminder also point out, FTA texts will end up defining the global digital order. In this situation India can opt for the Western big-tech-oriented digital architecture or preserve its digital autonomy and sovereignty — it cannot do both at the same time. And once in, and the deeper India is entangled, the more difficult it will be for the country to extricate itself.

As in the foreign and military policy spheres, in the digital area too the Indian government has so far blundered along, keeping its head above water by being “reactive”, with no “clear road map” of where it wants to go. This policy path of not knowing where to go and how to get there is a liability dragging down the country. Per Purushottam and Parminder what is desperately needed is the formulation of “a full-fledged digital security” and “digital industrialization” policy, which alone will enable the government to negotiate from a strong position and to “create the space to become a digital super power” rather than remain a “digital colony”, which is what FTAs like CETA will end up doing.

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But, alas, the national interest is hostage to the tender mercies of the generalist diplomats and civil servants running the show, even as Modi believes he is doing so! In the recent past, it obtained for the country the 2008 nuclear civilian cooperation deal negotiated by the generalist joint secretary and now minister, S Jaishankar, that strangled India’s ambitions of becoming a hefty thermonuclear weapons power until such time as the country gets a government with the will and the gumption to resume open-ended high-yield thermonuclear tests in the face of American opposition, and repays China for its nuclear missile arming of Pakistan by nuclear missile arming every country on the Chinese border. And now we have these generalist IAS-wallahs and their ilk screwing things up things fatally for India and complementing Jaishankar’s surrender of the country’s thermonuclear security by surrendering its digital sovereignty as well, all without flinching.

But not content with undermining India digitally they are now ensuring, under Goel and the aegis of the Modi dispensation, that India slips into the status of America’s economic vassal. Or, why else would the instructions go out from the PM’s office to every ministry to make lists where concessions can be made, and products and services can be bought to reduce the trade deficit with the US? The Modi regime behaves like a mangy dog with its tail between its legs when approached by a bigger one making noises.

If with respect to digital security and sovereignty, the Commerce Ministry had better learn from Messrs Purushottam and Parminder and recover the lost ground fast, with respect to the nitty gritty of negotiating with Trump’s trade reps, the country’s interest would have been better served had they heeded Ajay Srivastava’s advice. Srivastava, a 1989 batch trade officer, left the comforts of a sarkari job to start a think tank — Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), which is doing yeoman service for the nation. In a Reuters story published by Business Standard, May 26, Srivastava revealed the fundamental flaw in Minister Goel and his Commerce Ministry’s strategy of limiting the negotiations to what Washington desires, just trade where India has a $44 billion surplus, a figure that has got Trump hot under his collar.

But this is only the visible part of the trade imbalance iceberg. What the Indian side has not done, Srivastava reveals, is bringing to the negotiating table the US revenues generated in India for the American education, digital services, financial activities, intellectual property rights payments, Hollywood, Netflix and entertainment industry, royalties, and defence sales sectors, which when added up would turn the tables all the way around, and show a $35-$40 billion US surplus. More than enough for India legitimately to justify imposing higher tariffs on these unaccounted American export sectors and activities the “massive earnings” from which, Srivastava says, “do not show up in the narrow goods trade statistics. When you factor them in…the US…is sitting pretty.”

Srivastava deconstructs the “the non-trade” figures of the US trade surplus with India thus: Indian students payout to American universities in Fiscal 2025 is $35 billion ($25 billion in tuition and $10 billion in living expenses); Tech giants — Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, et al earn from India some $15-20 billion, American Financial Institutions and Consultants earn another $10 -$15 billion, and Global Capability Centers that create and innovate new technologies, services, and products for the American majors take in $10-$15 billion, and IPR payouts in pharmaceuticals, et al amount to $1-$1.5 billion. All this adds up — at the highest end of the revenue scale to some $86.5 billion. (Not sure why in the Reuters story Srivastava pegs this transfer of Indian wealth to only $35-$40 billion when it is more than twice that amount!)

So, how come the geniuses led by Goel in the Commerce Ministry, and other resident economic geniuses in the Government of India (in the PM’s panel of Economic Advisers, for instance) missed such a vast amount of wealth being yearly shuffled off to the US right before their eyes? Talk of being robbed blind. Shouldn’t Modi demote Goel to Animal Husbandry or something lesser and send the generalist babus assisting Goel responsible for this ridiculous situation, packing?

It is a situation where the Modi government is cringy and fearful of the next Trump strike, when the figures show that, far from India being on the defensive — something the Indian government reflexively adopts in any interaction with the US and the West, the Modi regime should be on the offensive in the trade negotiations with the Trump Administration, and talk of raising tariffs on US imports to equalize the transfers of wealth.

But will Modi, even at this late stage, do what’s beneficial for the National Interest and scrap any talk of any more buys to placate Trump, and stand up to Washington or, will he, as is likely, do as he has done repeatedly — cave in to every big power in sight — to the US, China, and whoever else next comes before him?

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India’s Modi & Brazil’s Lula — what a contrast in tackling Trump

Posted on July 31, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Modi’s February 2025 visit with Trump]

The perils and pitfalls of getting close to America and Trump were obviously not studied in any seriousness by the Indian government before Narasimha Rao began the movement in the early 1990s towards a US-tilted foreign policy — the dangers of which I have been warning incessantly about in my books and other writings. This skewed policy took wing with Manmohan Singh’s regime when his chief negotiator S Jaishankar, then MEA joint secretary (americas), fetched for the country the most disastrous one-sided nuclear cooperation deal (2008) imaginable that killed off India’s chances of ever emerging as a muscular thermonuclear weapon state. That policy flowered even more with Modi starting in 2014 with S Jaishankar again, this time as minister Sancho Panza, that has resulted in a policy of multi-billion dollar arms buys to gain American friendship that resulted in all sorts of vintage weapons and platforms (M-777 howitzers, C-17s, C-130s) in Indian inventory at huge cost, and has landed the country in such a sorry pass that these days Trump seeks by choice to beat up on Modi and India in lieu of anyone else to bully and badger!

Readers of this blog may have noticed the recent flurry of articles and op/eds by the country’s media commentariat (featuring retired foreign secretaries, diplomats, and such) suddenly discovering how perfidious America can be — something that I have been sounding the tocsin about over a very, very long time. The media has been party to popularising the view that Donald Trump in his second term would come through for his “friend” Narendra Modi and help India reach the “viksit Bharat” goal which, incidentally, is still the delusion driving the country’s foreign policy. After being slapped silly and mercilessly taunted by Trump, it is still not certain Modi will take umbrage. Or, to put it another way, how much more outrageously and offensively would Trump have to behave for Modi to respond? Because it is not just Modi who is being denigrated but also India, or is the Prime Minister unaware of this?

The confusion and perplexity at this adverse turn of events is mirrored in the actions of Modi, Jaishankar, and the MEA-NSC lot that had laid such great store by Piyush Goel and his commerce ministry babus reaching a “mutually beneficial” Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with America, little anticipating that the Indian government was rushing headlong into a tariff ambush Trump was laying for them. That Trump’s intention from the start has always been more than tariffs was plain enough — it is to make America’s European and Asian treaty allies and strategic partners, especially India, also its economic vassals. Economic vassalage, Trump and his advisers have determined, would be easiest to impose on Modi’s India considering how the Indian PM and his foreign minister, Jaishankar, have sought to ingratiate themselves, in big ways and small, to Washington and the West generally since 2014.

The immediate impact of 25% US tariff on Indian exports is bad enough, exceeding the 15% rate arbitrarily imposed on Japan, and 19% on Philippines and Indonesia in Asia. It is the Indian contracts for Russian oil and military equipment that are going to draw the biggest penalties and these imposts will amount to tens of billions of dollars. The grander aim appears to be, proverbially, to kill two birds with a single stone, i.e., to collapse the BRICS combine in which India, China and Russia are prominent members. BRICS, potentially an economic giant, is seen as the greatest danger to the US retaining its economic status as the ‘numero uno’ power. His fear is that BRICS is large enough, has the most dynamic economies of the world, to do serious damage to America’s standing if it also leads the charge in de-dollarising international trade. India’s rupee-rouble energy and defence transactions, and China’s preference for trading with Southeast Asian nations in its own currency — yuan, is for the US a red flag.

But to undermine BRICS, the US first seeks to reduce the strong alpha male-strong man leadership of the leading countries in this grouping — Putin, Xi, Modi, Luiz Lula da Silva, and Cyril Ramaphosa in the eyes of their domestic audiences. Putin is nearly immune to Washington pressure. Xi holds the promise of a state visit to Beijing that Trump wants as leverage for the US to not behave outrageously towards China. In fact, such is Xi’s command over Trump, and Washington is so eager to please Beijing, the Taiwan President Lai Ching-te was refused a transit through the US to visit the only three Latin American states that recognise Taiwan — Paraguay, Guatemala, and Belize. And this mind, is the America the Modi regime had all along hoped would act in terms of India as bulwark against China! Ramaphosa was insulted in the White House with Trump creating a controversy out of thin air by talking of “white genocide” of South African farmers. The South African, in turn, mocked Trump’s understanding of anything, leave alone anything related to Africa, and South Africa in particular. The recently elected President Lula in Brazil, however, took the fight to America. Calling Trump’s tariff threat “blackmail”, Lula, doubling on the provocation, declared that “the gringo will not order this president around.” Suitably elated with their man showing brass, Brazilians have responded by increasing their popular support for their presidente.

Contrasting Lula’s or even Ramaphosa’s strong reaction to a deliberately insulting Trump to Modi’s, who caved in instantly to Trump’s “request” (by the US president’s own account) and ended the Sindoor hostilities, is to realise just how little America really thinks of Modi and India, and contrarily how much Lula’s telling Trump where to get off has raised Brazil’s profile in the world at a time when European states and Japan are falling over themselves to prostrate before the US President. In fact, if as Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister and arguably the leader with the keenest personal insight into Trump, said that the EU’s conceding a 15% tariff rate was the consequence of Trump having the European Commission chairperson, Ursula von der Leyen , who negotiated this deal, “for breakfast”, then by his reckoning, the Trump Administration surely made a lunch out of the Indian minister Goel and his commerce ministry bumblers, and more centrally of the Modi government. But is there even a squeak out of New Delhi other than Rajnath Singh’s unconvincing rebuttal on Sindoor in Parliament to Trump’s unending insults?

What is unfolding is a tragedy for India masquerading as power play. The next time Trump talks of his “friend” Modi, New Delhi should be prepared for another American strike! The fact is the US President and his advisers have concluded that Modi is an easy mark and India a pliant enough state for Trump to crown his tariff war with success by arm-twisting India into America’s economic fold. Because manipulating Ramaphosa, Lula, Xi and Putin is deemed a more onerous task.

I mean, would Modi even remotely consider setting Trump and the US right by, say, freezing all defence acquisitions from America, informing Boeing about a stop to offtaking its passenger aircraft by any Indian airline, creating difficulties in the case-by-case consideration of any American request with regard to the four foundational accords? And, mull not offering Washington leverage by ending all talk in official channels of H1B visas for Indian techies (who will take care of themselves)?

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On a down path, Jaishankar leading

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Jaishankar & other SCO foreign ministers with Xi presiding]

India is tending irrefutably downwards in the external realm, perhaps, for the first time in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 11 years in office to-date.

The fiasco of Op Sindoor May 7-10 was the curtain raiser. I had wondered in a post on the mystery of no deaths other than that of family members of the Terrorist Azhar Mahmood in the Indian strikes on Muridke and Bahawalpur on May 7. That was cleared up early by foreign minister S Jaishankar’s revelation that Islamabad had been pre-warned about the incoming missile attacks on Muridke and Bahawalpur along with an assurance that no military facilities would be struck, and that this was a pre-offer to GHQ, Rawalpindi, to “stand down” after the attacks went through. And how in the wake of the effective May 10 missile and drone barrage, as it were, it was the Pakistan military that sought a ceasefire. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiVNgeKrm-E)

This raises the legitimate question: whether Jaishankar, who is tasked with implementing Modi’s policies re: US — to get close, and China —to give no offence, wasn’t being too clever by half. Jaishankar who apparently prides himself on knowing the American system decided he’d win some brownie points with Washington by alerting the Trump Administration to the M-B strikes before Islamabad was contacted. It boomeranged on India in two ways.

Firstly, Pakistan military, confident that the Indian armed services would be lax, not expecting a hard Pakistani response because New Delhi had given the game away (with its warning of specific targeting) saw it as an opportunity, using the Saab2000 AEWACS and the Chinese satellite guidance, to take down a few unsuspecting IAF aircraft. And also confident that with the US government put in the know by New Delhi, the Indian response even to the takedown of IAF planes — which in Asim Munir’s mind evened out the exchange and the Pak military’s ego was salved, would be limited. This proved to be the case. Why else, if the Indian government felt that it had militarily the upper hand, would it accept Pakistan’s offer of ceasefire May 10 considering Pakistan had hit back and its narrative was gaining traction worldwide at India’s expense? Recall that not a single country supported India’s actions.

Secondly, by informing Washington first, or at all, Jaishankar had set Trump up for an easy boastful diplomatic romp, and the Modi regime for a fall. Not one to miss out on hyperbolicising the “nuclear” aspect of any conflict, especially one that can be given a religious colouring an India-Pak, Hindu-Muslim, skirmish and trumpeting his own exaggerated role in defusing a flashpoint. He is so desperate for a Nobel Peace Prize — remember he wants to match Obama, who won the prize for nothing more than a single peace speech in Prague— surely, in his blunderbuss fashion Trump has done more!!

Short of broadcasting it through PIB, the Modi government had made the restricted nature of India’s Pahalgam retaliation amply clear, once it broached the topic of Indian strikes to the Trump Admin. So, any follow up actions by the Indian army to capitalise on the situation were ruled out, given that there was no offensive warlike disposition of the army, in any case.

What then was the whole Sindoor episode about other than to polish up Trump’s fictional narrative to boost his Nobel chances??? The government put out that Modi was steaming in frustration with Trump for stealing his thunder, by taking undue credit for shutting down any Indian military escalation as Washington claimed was the case when, other than, the intra-mural (as I called it) motivation to show up Munir for his puerile “48 hour” threat with the Indian May 10 missile attacks, nothing else was on the cards.

What this episode revealed was Modi’s low standing with Trump because of the latter’s conviction that the Indian PM would not publicly and personally refute his claims’s of his alleged central role in ending Sindoor. And further, that the Indian leader would swallow the insult of Munir’s notable welcome at the White House without in any way damaging the prospects of the Free Trade Agreement with India under negotiation, or hurting the general direction of bilateral relations. Again, Washington was proved right. Because commerce minister Piyush Goel, was gung-ho about an FTA, lining up India for concessions and economic giveaways, including $750 billion worth of annual Indian central, state, and local public procurement that, following the FTA lead with UK and EU, will permit American firms to bid for — driving a stake through the heart of Indian industry.

But Indian-origin —who else? — Washington Beltway think tankers are demanding more. Of India! One of them wants the Modi dispensation to reciprocate years of what he calls America’s “strategic altruism” with more giveaways. Perhaps, the American altruism includes Zbigniew Brzezinski — President Jimmy Carter’s NSA’s policy of encouraging China’s proliferation of nuclear weapon and missile technologies to Pakistan starting in 1979, continued by the incoming Reagan administration, in return for Pakistan army ISI’s staging the CIA’s mujahideen operation to undermine the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan. Just, may be, Jaishankar’s attitude resonates with such advice and India is returning love and bouquets for Trump’s brickbats!!

But shouldn’t the PM be concerned with the “practical” advice he has been getting from his foreign minister, Jaishankar, on how specifically to handle Washington and Trump, in particular? Japan, America’s closest ally in Asia, for example, decided to cancel the scheduled 1st July 2×2 meeting of foreign and defence ministers, to protest Trump’s tariffs and his pressuring Tokyo to increase its defence spending to 5% of GDP. And then here’s Modi’s India, pushed by Jaishankar, revealing plans for a surprise attack on Pakistani heartland, and expecting not only that Washington would be simpatico with the Op’s anti-terrorist slant, but would back it in the venture, entirely misreading the historically strong US commitment to Pakistan, and Trump’s special love and longing for tough-talking generals and in Munir’s case, a self-appointed “Field Marshal”. And more, the Indian government is preparing to “open up” India for American business — as reward for the Trump Admin doing what? Courtesy Jaishankar, for showing up Modi as a weak-kneed leader, and for getting political-diplomatic mud on India’s face. And for the Indian military — not known for being offensive-minded, reinforcing its reputation only for small time actions against a small time foe?

At the other end, there was Jaishankar’s trip to Beijing ostensibly to attend the SCO foreign ministers meet. But his being in the city for several days before the start of the conference led, as a Taiwan-based Indian academic noted, in snide Chinese media reports of India seeking to mend its relations with China and preparing in effect to do what it does best — kowtow! Indian industry’s shortages of rare earths materials and base chemicals for its pharmaceutical factories and electronics components for its telecommunications manufacturers, and the troubling matter of an active Chinese military role with its Beidou LEO satellite constellation the PAF plugged into during Sindoor, and China’s successful forays in winning over the states neighbouring India — Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh and, of course, Pakistan, are all seemingly concerns inducing New Delhi to cry Uncle! And for Jaishankar to go cup in hand to his counterpart, Wang Yi.

This dependence on China was engineered by MEA fixated on warm relations with China over decades. After all, what does the Indian Foreign Service officers believe their remit is?? It is apparently not to think strategically, whether in economic or military terms. Because if economic strategies were their concern, they would have long ago warned the Indian government to incentivise the production of electronics components and base chemicals and such, and urged setting up a rare earths refining capacity. Just to make clear, rare earths minerals are available everywhere in lesser or larger quantities — so mining and refining becomes ultimately a costing exercise — what is the country willing to pay for getting indigenously-produced rare earths, that’s the question. In Jaishankar’s MEA calculus, rare earths and base chemicals from China constitute an economic option — no more informed than the Chawri Bazar trader who imports some lampshades! Meanwhile, the Chinese leadership and state were busy cornering not just the global rare earths market by taking ownership of mines and unmined reserves in Africa, Central Asia and South America, but also the manufacturing jobs, and leading the charge on cutting edge science and technology, especially the defining technology of tomorrow — Artificial Intelligence, to boot.

Meanwhile, a decade plus into his job, Modi is still mulling over whether and how much to de-bureaucratise the economy! And ease up on the land, labour and taxation laws to allow investment flows in the manufacturing sector to flood in.

So, how about military strategics? Well, the less said the better I still have the then Foreign Secretary K Raghunath’s words ringing in my ears when I asked him in an NSAB’s session with MEA in 1998 about India’s alighting on a tit-for-tat measure — and I have recounted this interaction umpteen time on this blog and in my books, of nuclear missile arming countries on China’s periphery with nuclear weapons — an albeit belated response to Beijing’s cold blooded equipping of Pakistan with the same along with the transfer of all requisite technologies and designing expertise, even as the US rode shotgun on this illicit commerce. And all that the wretched MEA babu had to say to the NSAB was that reciprocal action was “NOT A PRACTICABLE SOLUTION”!!!

Did anyone in Zhongnanhai caution Chairman Dengxiaoping against such n-proliferation when he embarked on his “Nuclearising Pakistan” actions because it was not befitting “a responsible state”? Or, did anyone in Washington cry halt! when the US first proliferated to Britain and later France, and still later permitted France to nuclear-wise help Israel get over the weapons hump? Or, anyone in Kremlin stop Khrushchev from sending in the mid-1950s nuclear weapons and missile materials, technologies, and experts to China to beef up Communist bloc solidarity?

It falls then to the “responsible state” theming MEA to successfully canvas AGAINST India doing what all the major countries have done when proliferation served their national interests — PROLIFERATE to do in the enemy, the more recklessly the better to have the intended effort. Would Beijing be acting the way it does now with India had New Delhi grown a bit of spine and transferred entirely indigenously developed weapons technologies and expertise to states seeking absolute security against China?

Guess who stops India now from doing the same? It is Modi’s fear of the US and China, and the efforts by MEA personages, like Jaishankar, to bolster that fear to ensure not only that India does NOT use the self defence provision — Article 51 of the UN Charter to onpass sensitive N-tech to friendly countries bordering China, but actually to hamstring the country by pushing it towards shackling itself with still more constraints. Such as membership in, say, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the MEA craves as they have already done vis a vis missile technology by having India sign the Missile Technology Control Regime, join the Wassenaar Agreement, the Australia Group, et al. These are MEA personnel seeking to curry favour with Washington and European governments because their children all reside in the US and the West. A former IFS man and Congress party apparatchik Mani Shankar Aiyar reckoned that over 95% of senior Indian diplomats’ progeny are so placed! Senior Indian military officers too have been part of this game for some 30 years now.

Everybody in the Indian government seems to be up for sale. Who in the Indian government can an Indian citizen anymore trust to do well by the country?

US ambassador John Galbraith during the Kennedy years confessed that a cabinet decision would be communicated to him for a bottle of Scotch! This was the Sixties. Today the price has gone up and is in the form — not of secret offshore accounts — that’s passe’ — but of sons and daughters of officials being taken care of by “scholarships” to Ivy League universities, jobs with Western companies, and resident visas. Talk of a “bikauu” (purchasable) Third World Indian government bureaucracy!

India’s ultimate foreign and military policy tragedy is that foreign interests have always driven them. If, in the early years Nehru relied on the Mountbatten-Blackett duo, in the main, to shape the external policy and national security outlook and approach, today we have our own leaders, diplomats, secretaries to the government and the lot, and senior military officers channeling India into the American/Western dependency trap, while mouthing the “strategic autonomy”-“Nonalignment 3.0” claptrap

Why not just hang a placard — “India for SALE”?

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Will India crumble before China, again?

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama]

This has been a bad year for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and, therefore, for India and Indian foreign-military policy.

First, the reelection of Donald Trump to his second term as US President isn’t panning out the way Modi had hoped. It seems the Indian PM mistook the American’s transactionalist statecraft for the kind of personalised diplomacy Modi thinks he is good at. Op Sindoor proved that the PM had got it all wrong — and this was the second big shock. Far from reining in General Asim Munir on the terrorism issue, Trump pressured India into pulling out from a conflict that was moving towards an end favouring Delhi, to save Pakistan from a serious military situation and Munir his job. And far from reacting badly, we have foreign minister S Jaishankar moseying over to Washington to reassure the US that “our defence partnership is today truly one of the most consequential pillars of the relationship” and for the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to indicate what such a partnership really means: “complete several major pending US defence sales to India”. Rajnath Singh, supportive of Hegseth’s understanding, asked the latter to hurry up and deliver Apache attack helicopters! In other words, Modi’s India is willing to eat crow to remain on America’s side, and help its defence industry along by buying all its old hardware but expensively, even if it results in the blighting of the prospects of the indigenous Tejas, AMCA and the Light Combat Helicopter, for starters.

The third bad turn of events is upon us — the likely announcement on his 90th birthday by His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama — the embodiment of the Buddha on earth, of his successor by “reincarnation”. He has already declared that his reincarnation will be announced even if by means of “emanations” and that the 15th Dalai Lama would be a “free land” born Tibetan, which rules out China the nearest thing to George Orwell’s authoritarian, heavily policed, state of “1984”. The emanations path suggests itself when the Dalai Lama has to be found even as the current one is alive. “There have been notable instances of recognized emanations in recent times within the Nyingma and Sakya schools of Tibetan Buddhism”, writes Kelsang Aukatsang, the Dalai Lama’s representative or ambassador to the US, leading to the recognition of “a 13- or 14-year-old, [to] transmit [Dalai Lama’s] wisdom [to], and ensure continuity in spiritual leadership. This would also resolve the long-standing issue of an interregnum—the often decades-long gap between the death of a Dalai Lama and the maturity of his recognized reincarnation.”

“Interregnums are often precarious; throughout Tibetan history, regents of young Dalai Lamas have faced challenges in maintaining authority” says Aukatsang. “Such gaps in leadership have historically led to factional infighting, financial mismanagement, weakened central authority, political instability, and increased vulnerability to external threats.” Another important reform to ease the succession crisis that is possibly up for consideration, he explains, “is the creation of a council charged with implementing the Dalai Lama’s written instructions on succession. This body should include representatives from the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism—Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Gelug—as well as Bon, Tibet’s indigenous, pre-Buddhist tradition. By establishing such a council and clearly outlining its mandate, the Dalai Lama would address a critical gap, as there is presently no formal mechanism to ensure that his succession guidelines are carried out, or by whom. This council should report to the Gaden Phodrang Trust. A diverse, credible council would offer both transparency and expertise for what is likely to be a complex and contested process as well as guard against mounting efforts by the [Chinnese Communist Party and [President] Xi [Jinping] to co-opt this sacred tradition for political ends.”

A furious Communist China which, has indulged in skullduggery in extremis, wants to control the agency of the Dalai Lama in order to establish full and complete control over the Tibetan population and crown its 70 year long campaign of Tibetan genocide, by reducing the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism to a Chinese Communist Party apparatchik. It is insisting that only Beijing has the authority to appoint the new Dalai Lama and, in fact, proposed the “golden urn” path to selecting the next Dalai Lama by drawing the name from among several candidates. This method was used only once, to select the 11th Dalai Lama.

Except, as Aukatsang reveals, “Any possibility of finding common ground with the Chinese leadership on the issue of succession was shattered in 1995, when China hijacked the reincarnation process of the 10th Panchen Lama, the second-ranking religious figure in Tibet. The Chinese government abducted the legitimate 11th Panchen Lama, then just 6 years old, and his family, installing a state-approved replacement. The real Panchen Lama has been missing ever since, making 2025 the 30th year of his enforced disappearance.” ( https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/02/dalai-lama-reincarnation-china-tibet-relgion/ )

After deeply mulling the relevance of the institution in the modern day of the Dalai Lama to Tibetans, to Tibet, to Buddhism, and to the world, and whether he shouldn’t end it — because China’s grip on Tibet is only strengthening, His Holiness decided to everyone’s relief that there would be a successor. Because he said of the overwhelming demand from his advisers — the high lamas, the Tibetan exile community in India numbering some 85,000, and [bcause of] representations by Buddhists and Buddhist organisations in the Himalayan region, and by “Mongolia, Buddhist republics of the Russian Federation, and Buddhists in Asia including mainland China.” These constituencies of the Dalai Lama could be mustered for a response to a question someone might ask — as Joseph Stalin did when there was talk of involving the Pope in peacemaking during the Second World War: “The Pope! How many divisions has he got?”

In all the three bad turns enumerated above, it should be apparent to all that it was the Indian government that brought them on, and is responsible for them.

And this bad record it seems will continue. Consider the uneasy silence of the MEA and the Indian government on the issue of recognising the 15th Dalai Lama when his reincarnation is announced by the 14th. Is it a prelude to India capitulating? Beijing has already made it plain that it would look askance at New Delhi siding with the Tibetan Government in Exile, because it claims the installation of the 15th Dalai Lama is central to its “One China” principle.

Considering what’s at stake, it is a glorious opportunity for Prime Minister Modi to prove he is no pushover and that he cares less whether Xi and Zhongnanhai would be troubled and upset with India’s support for the institution of a free Dalai Lama in a free India, and if that means the Chinese People’s Liberation Army acting up on the 4,700 kms long disputed border, well, the Indian military is up for it!

It is an opportunity for Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party regime to reverse the worst foreign policy mistake India made during Jawaharlal Nehru’s time of ceding Tibet without a fight, of pulling back from covertly supporting the Khampa rebellion in the late 1950s, and thereafter doing everything possible to help elevate Communist China. In 1955-56, it generously handed over the UN Security Council permanent seat vacated by Chiangkaishek’s Taiwan and offered to India by both the US and USSR, over to Mao’s China and, in a similar fit of self-abnegation, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, even more weak-headed and weak-kneed than Nehru, in 2003 approved and facilitated China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation! India has been Beijing’s favourite diplomatic, economic and military punching bag.

But what can a punching bag do other than Nothing?

Is everybody’s punching bag what Modi wants India to be known as? If not, then there’s a strategic opportunity staring him in the face. First, loudly declare the Indian government’s whole-hearted support for the “sovereign status” of the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala, and, for the 15th Dalai Lama — whenever that reincarnation is announced.

Next, boldly issue a demarche to the Xi regime that India resiles wholly from the previous one-sided acceptance of the “One China” concept. But that New Delhi might re-consider the “One China” principle ONLY IF the Chinese government formally recognises the “One India” principle, inclusive of the erstwhile “princely kingdom” of Kashmir, inclusive of all of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the principalities of Hunza, Nagar, Yasin, Koh-Ghizer, Punial, Chilas, Darel, and TangirHunza in the greater Gilgit-Baltistan region, and the Shaksgam Valley gifted illegally by Ayub Khan to China in 1963. And make these exchanges public.

The simple bargain: China can have “One China” if India gets recognition from Beijing for “One India”. And it should be made amply clear that this “One China” DOES NOT INCLUDE TAIWAN — a separate entity, with which India could establish formal diplomatic relations.

The Indian government needs to end — the lily-livered poufs inhabiting the China Study Group, the apex body that habitually misshapes the country’s China policy, permitting! — India’s policy of unilateral giveaways, and declare that hereon bilateral relations with China will be on a strictly reciprocal basis. You do something, India will return it in exactly the same measure. And that means New Delhi doing an — Om Ganeshesynamah! on transferring, overtly or covertly, strategic/nuclear warheaded missiles, including the Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles, to any country on China’s border which wants absolute security for itself! This move is entirely legal under the Self-Defence Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Revenge, as US President Richard Nixon said, is “a dish best served cold”.

Putting steel in India’s China policy will, moreover, automatically alert the US, Europe, the world to a changed India, raise its stock and standing and, in Asia, where India does not command much respect, increase the desire to strategically partner it in forming a strong bulwark against Beijing’s hegemonistic tendencies. It will be the first time, Modiji, that India would really amount to something.

It is time India, Mr Prime Minister, walked its talk. Your government cannot keep yakking about terrorism and Pakistan — seemingly the full time occupation of Jaishankar and his MEA, even as China makes trouble for the country every which way without Delhi responding in any form. There’s no reason to fear China — it has more troubles than it acknowledges, and its military is good, but mostly on paper. It has never been lately tested in operations. The Indian army is, if nothing else, an operationally blooded force — faced live fire for the last 70-odd years, in insurgencies in the northeast, in Kashmir. The PLA, in contrast, has NOT been in battle since it was hammered by the Vietnamese irregulars in 1979 — even before the regular Vietnamese forces took the field!

[And, Mr Prime Minister, would you please dissolve the wretched China Study Group? Because there’s no greater national security liability.]

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Defence procurement, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indo-Pacific, Internal Security, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, nonproliferation, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Russia, russian military, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Taiwan, Technology transfer, technology, self-reliance, Terrorism, Tibet, Trade with China, UN, United States, US., war & technology, Weapons, Western militaries | Tagged , , , , | 45 Comments

Whom to blame for the downed IAF aircraft in Sindoor

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

The statement in the Press today that made a splash was by the Indian Defence Attache, Jakarta, Captain Shiv Kumar, Indian Navy (https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/op-sindoor-losses-due-to-restrictions-on-hitting-military-targets-navy-officer-101751204975610.html). It was in reply to the issue of five downed IAF aircraft in Op Sindoor — three Rafales, and one each of Su-30MKI and MiG-29, raised by Tommy Tamtomo, Vice Chairman of the Indonesia Centre for Air Power Studies at a seminar on “Analysis of the Pakistan-India Air Battle and Indonesia’s Anticipatory Strategies from the Perspective of Air Power”. The Pakistan Air Force actions were part of its Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos.

“India lost a lot, but Pakistan also lost a lot. Maybe more than India,” Tamtomo said at the seminar before disclosing that PAF losses were six fighter jets, two AWACS aircraft and a military transport plane.

Tamtomo’s figures of IAF and PAF losses were no doubt conveyed to Jakarta by the PAF, which has a close relationship with the air force of Indonesia — not just a fellow Muslim majority state but, population-wise (242 million), the largest Islamic state in the world, and verily Dar al-Islam.

Captain Kumar admitted the downing of IAF aircraft without confirming the numbers of aircraft lost, and attributed these losses to “the constraint given by the political leadership to not attack the military establishments and their air defences…No military installations, no civil installations, nothing which was not connected to terrorists was to be targeted,” he added. “After the loss,”, he explained, “we changed our tactics and went for their military installations. We first achieved suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) and destruction of enemy air defences (DEAD)… and that’s why all our attacks could easily go through using surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface missiles…On May 8, 9 and 10, there was complete air superiority by India,”

It is revealing that even as the defence ministry spokesperson declined to comment on Kumar’s supposedly controversial remarks, the Indian embassy in Jakarta likely prompted by the MEA piped in, saying, what else, that Captain Kumar was quoted “out of context”. It went on to elaborate that “The media reports are a mis-representation of the intention and thrust of the presentation made by the speaker. The presentation conveyed that the Indian Armed Forces serve under civilian political leadership unlike some other countries in our neighbourhood. It was also explained that the objective of Operation Sindoor was to target terrorist infrastructure and the Indian response was non-escalatory.”

Unwittingly, the Jakarta Embassy put its finger on the nub of the issue — the instructions of “the civilian political leadership” which the IAF scrupulously followed apparently to its detriment.

Before examining the IAF’s part in this Sindoor fiasco, let us consider the political leadership’s role which, in this case, means Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role. Nothing, of course, is known about how and why Modi articulated the instructions as Captain Kumar has relayed them, and whether the PM consulted any outside experts or merely told his cabinet of noddy-heads, and that was that. If he did ask the defence minister Rajnath Singh and foreign minister S Jaishankar for their views, what if anything meaningful might they have chimed in with?

There was almost a fortnight between the Pahalgam killings (April 22) and the first day of Sindoor (May 7) so there was more than enough time for all the parties involved in decision making in Delhi to deliberate deeply before alighting on the punitive military response. In lieu of any real information or even leaks to the media, one can only speculate about what happened. So, permit me to indulge in speculation.

The terrorist attack was the provocation. Reasonably the retaliation would involve striking back at the terrorist groups — Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, the usual suspects. It was a really tremendous decision by Modi to not restrict the strikes to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir but to hit the LeT and JeM bases at Muridke and Bahawalpur — across the international border, thereby establishing an important and necessary precedent for the future. It was a response that had been contemplated for a few decades before Modi got up the nerve to finally order it. Fine!

The strikes went home, but obviously the Pakistanis had intel/forewarning, because they had emptied the madrassahs in these terrorist centres of people. It is a mystery though why the chief JeM villain, Masood Azhar, was in the know but his family was not informed, whereupon there was that very public lamenting by Masood about his loss.

The important thing to wonder is what Modi expected to happen by way of a Pakistani response. Was he really briefed by RAW (?), Jaishankar (?) or someone else to believe that immediate post-strikes on M&B there would be no Pakistani miltary reaction? Not even after Director General, Military Operations, Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai’s call to his Pakistani opposite number, telling him about the very limited intent behind the hits on just the terrorist bases, and Major General Kashif Abdullah’s brusque and abrupt ending of that conversation?

It is clear that the Indian army was on alert but did not expect to go into action because there were no hard preparations whatsoever for any ingress into POK or across the international border and, CNS Tripathi’s statements about ships on station and his force’s readiness to rattle some Pakistani naval teeth, notwithstanding, the Indian Navy was not really expecting to blockade/blowup Karachi — harbour, city, or whatever.

Why was this so? Why did no one in the government or in the armed services, expect a military response? Could it be because the government was assured that the Pakistan military would swallow its pride and lump it? If so, by whom?

Or, was it the view in government, perhaps Jaishankar’s/MEA’s, that with so transparent and forthcoming an approach, the Pakistan military would be deterred from reacting “disproportionately” for fear of creating ruction with the US, etc.

That doesn’t however explain why if the Indian armed forces were on alert to thwart an angry reaction, the IAF — and this is where the CAS, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, has some explaining to do, the Indian fighter planes were patrolling the border on a chowkidari mission without a clue about the Saab 2000 Erieye AEWACS (aerial early warning and control system) surveilling the Indian air space, tracking the Indian aircraft, and cueing the Pakistani JC-10s for the kills with the longrange PL-15Es fired safely from standoff range well within Pakistan.

The $ million Question: Where were the IAF’s radar mounted Embraer ERJ145 Netra AEWACS to monitor Pakistani air space and pick up on encrypted electronic signals passing between the Saab and the JC-10s? Obviously the Netras were altogether absent from the order of battle, why so? No Netras is why the Indian aircraft were flying in buddy formation, one behind the other, with the plane in the rear scanning the enemy air space. If so, then how is it that none of the buddy aircraft picked up on PAF’s loitering AEWACS or even the JC10s.

In this situation, it was natural that the PAF would capitalise on the opportunity — intimated by Ghai’s call to Abdullah which signalled to GHQ, Rawalpindi, that the Indians were not up for a full-fledged conflict, thereby setting up the unsuspecting IAF aircrft nicely for the kill. But after the first Rafale or whatever went down, why did the Air Ops under Air Marshal AK Bharti not instantly pull back the IAF patrollers deeper inside the country to avoid the easy targeting by the enemy, and reconsider how to neutralise the Erieye for starters. And how come the next four combat aircraft were downed in quick succession in like manner? Isn’t there a communications system linking aircraft to ground control and to each other — so how come none of the pilots in the aircraft downed later were aware of what was coming at them? And how come the IAF Ops centre couldn’t figure out the information fusing between the Saab, JC10s and the PL15Es, and how innovatively the PAF was using its assets?

Bharti’s statement at the May 11 media briefing that “We are in a combat scenario; losses are a part of combat. The question you must ask is if we have achieved our objective of decimating the terrorist camps. The answer is a thumping yes” was self-serving to say the least. Because the real question to ask is whether the downing of 5 combat aircraft — let’s take Tamtomo at his word, valued in excess of a BILLION DOLLARS worth the destruction of a few measly buildings in Muridke and Bahawalpur?

Sure, the strategic strikes on May 9 midnight-May 10 morning earned the IAF air dominance, OK. But what did the Indian military do with it? Why did the army do nothing with the open skies other than adhere so strictly to Modi’s orders that Ghai and Co. at the MO Directorate forgot they could use the freedom from aerial hindering by PAF to push for some real territorial gains — Haji Pir, etc as I have detailed in my previous posts, which would have radically changed the Kashmir reality.

But to return to the Prime Minister’s thinking: Surely there’s no equal to him on the political scene in his ability to read the politics of the country. But while he may have good common sense instincts, surely, he would have benefited from someone/anyone in the miltary, or from outside, telling him to drive the wedge when he could into POK.

And, by way of a lesson for the PM for the future: Decide your initial objective but warn the military that what follows after the first shot is fired is entirely their outlook, their business to see to the end, and for them to not do nothing while awaiting further instructions — but to rush through once the door is flung open!

The civilian control of the military is commendable, but once in war the control has to be ceded to the military. A war cannot be run from 7, Race Course Road. Not mind, that the Indian military would have done much with the control, had it been ceded to them in Sindoor. It is too passive-defensive-reactive a force by habit of mind to do anything of note in war

At the heart of the problem India has always had with Pakistan and China is this: While India in a fight always behaves, for no good reason, with an elevated sense of purpose, propriety and self-imposed restraint, the attitude of a scrappy Pakistan in particular is that it is in a knife fight. Guess what happens every time?!

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence procurement, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, russian assistance, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US., war & technology | Tagged , , , , | 28 Comments

Finish the job! — Main lesson from Sindoor

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

Asked yesterday about requesting Israel to hold off attacking Iran in order to get a peace initiative going, US President Donald Trump replied that he could make such a request but it is difficult to ask “the winning side” to stop! [‘The Source’ with Kaitlin Collins, CNN, June 20, 2025]

Now extrapolate that comment to his intervention May 9-10 in the India-Pakistan clash that Trump insists he ended, but complains he has not received the publicity or the credit for! — and what can one conclude? Essentially, that by America’s reckoning India was NOT WINNING — or why else, by the Trumpian logic, would Modi stop the Indian military operation when he did?

Indeed, why did India end its actions as soon as Trump came on the scene? Prime Minister Modi’s and external affairs minister S Jaishankar’s weak, flustered, and entirely unconvincing reactions that successfuly striking the important Pakistan air force bases, including the PAF command, control, communications hub at Nur Khan in Chaklala, was in fact the sole strategic objective, having achieved which the Indian government had no further interest in prolonging the “war”, is laughable. Surely, there was more planned than just these aerial attacks. What could those plans be? Perhaps, “kabaddi tactics” — army lingo, as a former theatre commander told me, for taking some terrain features across the LOC? But Sindoor was bereft of even such small actions.

Or, just may be, Trump’s call put Indian military plans — whatever they were — on hold after the aerial strikes, as the Indian PM scrambled — almost a reflex tendency of the Indian government in the new millennium, to please and pacify the US President by ending Sindoor right there and then.

Except, it spelled a tragic end to what could have been game-changing developments, including a deliberate hiving off of, say, the Haji Pir Salient, a significant portion of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir territory that could have been executed with a Division-size force, with the Pakistani forces inside the Bulge aerially bombed into pulp with Indian air dominance, for the Indian army units to mop up.

Such an end would have left the Pakistan army high and dry — an entity for the Pakistani people to mock — after all could General Asim Munir have declared a great victory as he did after Sindoor, with the Indian tricolour flying over Haji Pir? Munir, far from awarding himself the Field Marshal’s baton might have seen his “superiors” in the Corps Commanders Conference — all graduates of the Pakistan Military Academy, Karkul, handing him — a parvenu from the Officer’s Training School, Mangla, his backside on a platter, and an ignoble retirement. Instead, he lunched with Trump, heard the US President tell him (according to BBC News in Urdu) how “honoured” he [Trump] was to meet him, and to say “I love Pakistan” and, satisfyingly, saw a re-hyphenation India and Pakistan. He returned home with his celebrity as the Prophet’s own — the Man who would realise Gazwa-i-Hind, burnished!

And all because, as usual, the Indian leadership lacked the strategic sense and understanding to push for the military advantage staring them in the face! This has happened many times in the past, most egregiously, when Indira Gandhi terminated the 1982 operation that would have led to the Israeli Air Force, staging out of Jamnagar and Udhampur, bombing the crap out of Kahuta, with the underground weapons complex at nearby Golra then under construction, and ending the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme and aspirations for good. But the likes of PN Haksar and other advisers prevailed, and Indira G called off the action — for fear, get this! – of negative international opinion! That Israeli op had planned on IsAF F-16s dropping precision bombs and F-15 flying escort (combat air patrol), and would have worked as did the previous such Israeli action in 1981 that took out the Osiraq reactor complex in Baghdad.

Now consider an alternative scenario and outcome: Prompted by US intel and US Central Command CINC army General Michael Kurilla that Pakistan is too useful to the US to allow it go down, Trump calls Modi, say, the evening of May 9th. Aware of the missile strikes planned for midnight, the Indian PM commits to nothing. By 1000 hrs May 10th the situation is clear — missiles have taken out most of the major Pakistani air bases and radar complexes (such as Sargodha) and no coordinated PAF air activity is now possible. Such actions as the PAF can still muster would be from satellite fields without the infrastruture to sustain heavy actions. So, India achieves air dominance over Pakistani skies.

Assuming the Indian air force had anticipated this turn of events and a cued-in army had instantly begun probing actions by 1200 hrs and full push into the Haji Pir area by 1600hrs. All this would have happened after Trump called again, by when Modi would have stalled the White House by simply not getting on the phone — very busy with engagements, etc, after all the PM has a country to run that is multiple times more complex than the US, so very busy! Meanwhile, the US Kh-11 satellites and their humint penetrated deep inside GOI would have alerted Trump that the Indian army would take Haji Pir. A desperate Munir-Shehbaz would call Trump for help. Trump would find Modi not coming to the phone — again, very busy! By May 15-16, with IAF raining down bombs and Indian 155mm howitzers continuously pounding the Pakistani army formations inside the Haji Pir Bulge for the previous 5-6 days and the Indian army taking care of details, the Haji Pir, in this shock Indian action would have been vacated of any Pakistani presence, or would have had a “bag” of Pakistani army POWs.

So, finally when the PM would reach a phone, he could explain to Trump how he was busy, among other things, propitiating the Lord God of Odisha, Lord Jagannath, etc and gone into great detail about Odisha culture and so on, and bored Trump to tears. It would have completely thrown off Trump, mystified him no end, and upended his talking points. And Modi would explain to Trump the new reality on the ground — Haji Pir in J&K and how all was well with the world. And alert Trump to the fact that in case of future terrorist incidents, more parts of POK would similarly, automatically, and permanently be annexed and absorbed, and quote the relevant sections of international law on ceasefire lines, to stress the legitimacy of Indian military actions!

The US President’s relaying any idiotic Pakistani nuclear threat could have been met with a quiet dare to Munir to just try it. That would have done it for Munir, Pakistan, and American interference in Kashmir affairs. The trouble is India never finishes the job. At Simla in 1972, with 93,000 Pakistani POWs as leverage, Indira G could have enforced a victor’s peace — and wrenched all of POK including Gilgit Hunza and Baltistan from Pakistan, and formally settled the border on this new line stretching all the way from Gurdaspur to Skardu and points north. But the Indian PM succumbed to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s sweet words and promises.

In Sindoor, taking Haji Pir would have incentivised Islamabad — on the pain of losing more and more of its POK in this manner, to formally accept the new LOC established as the international boundary. And ended the two-front nonsense the Indian military is so preoccupied with that it ignored for five decades the very real China threat until Galwan in 2020 knocked some sense into them — the previous major faceoffs in the Depsang Plains and in Dokla in 2017 apparently ringing no loud alarm bells.

Instead, what’s the scene post-Sindoor? Trump is publicly and playfully contemptuous of Modi, Munir lunches at the White House, the CDS futilely accounts for the Indian aircraft lost on May 7th, and the Defence Secretary, Rajesh Kumar Singh refers to Trump’s invitation to Munir — not Shehbaz Sharif — and the General’s running the show on the other side of the Radcliffe Line — as “an embarrassment” as if that is some great revelation!

Slim Pickings, ain’t it? This when India could have had so much more if only the Indian armed services were more on the ball and geared to grabbing military opportunities on the battlefield by their forelocks, and the Indian leaders had shown more self-respect, held their nerve, and brushed off Trump’s pressure. That, incidentally, would certainly have drawn regard and respect from Trump, who is in awe of strongmen, alpha leaders, who stand up to him. Recall how Kim Jong-un of North Korea tamed him, and Putin has him on a leash. And why he called Munir to the White House and, insultingly as an afterthought, also invited Modi — who thankfully had the good sense to decline. This last was the only good thing the Indian PM did post-Sindoor.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Islamic countries, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Missiles, North Korea, Northeast Asia, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, Russia, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US., war & technology | Tagged , , , , | 51 Comments

Compare & contrast: Israeli attacks on Iran & Sindoor

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[Israeli PM Netanyahu & IsAF planes on flight line]

US President Donald Trump forbade Israel from striking Iranian nuclear sites. Because he wanted credit for a nuclear deal with Tehran he was in the process of negotiating. Netanyahu told Trump during his April visit — nothing doing, forcing the US government to pullout Americans from the region. In the face of American opposition, Israel unleashed a devastating series of air strikes very early this morning that may not have taken out the deep — half-mile deep underground centrifuge uranium enrichment facility at Fordow in the mountains near Qom, for lack of both the big deep earth penetrator bomb and large bomber aircraft to carry and drop it. US’ nonparticpation meant Israel did not have this combo of decisive weapon and delivery system.

But the strikes may have hit the secondary centrifuge plant at Natanz, other N-installations in Isfahan, ballistic missile factories, and longrange missile batteries as well. Not a country to leave a job half done, separate IsAF sorties decapitated the Iranian nuclear program and military leadership — killing the chief nuclear scientists and engineers and military authority, including Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of Staff of the Iranian defence forces, and Major General Hossein Salami, chief of Pasdaran — Islamic Revolutionary Security Guard. The aerial war is being complemented, moreover, by Mossad activity on the ground inside Iran to neutralise, among other things, Iranian air defence systems, in a combined operation called ‘Rising Lion’. Interestingly. Rising Lion is open-ended with Mossad and IsAF acting in tandem to denature the Iran threat, once and for all.

Switch to Sindoor situation May 10. Air-to-ground strikes with long range missiles fired from Indian airspace — mainly Brahmos and Scalp, had afforded India near complete air dominance with the destruction of the C3 (command, control, communications) hub making coordinated air activity by PAF nearly impossible. The Indian army, at that point, should have pivoted smartly to a land offensive to, at a minimum, capture and reclaim Haji Pir in the disputed territory of Pak-occupied Kashmir. Of course, the Indian army had not prepared for any such “strike and annex” operation — the Indian military never prepares for capitalising on any half-chance offered on the battlefield, and of course it was not nimble enough to mobilise and push with the forces in the Uri, Mandi, Poonch subsectors to take the Salient in Pakistani hands, which has been a thorn in India’s fight against terrorism.

Instead, the next thing we see is the Indian Director General, Military Operations, for no good military reason — unless he was instructed by the Modi government to do so, accepting a Pakistani request for ceasefire! Sure, the fact that the Modi regime reacted so bitterly against Trump’s claiming success for ending this “three day” farce of an India-Pakistan “war”, suggests Prime Minister Modi was indeed arm-twisted into ending hostilities. The US has made no bones about just how close it is to Pakistan and why it is indispensable to American plans for the region. The retiring commander-in-chief, US Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, spelled it out — he praised Pakistan as a “phenomenal” partner in the fight against the Islamic State Khorasan.

The duo of Modi and Jaishankar seem, however, not to be convinced by something Washington daily broadcasts — that Trump is for “America First” and would kick NATO and Asian allies and partners aside if that served his purposes. They really believe India can close in with America and displace Pakistan. What does Kurilla know! So, we witnessed the jaunts at Indian taxpayer’s expense by MPs to faroff points to convince disinterested countries that (1) terrorism is bad, (2) Pakistan is terrorism Central, and (3) that India had won Sindoor! As far as I can make out, these trips, some to Islamic countries, had zero impact — Shashi Tharoor’s mellifluous verbosity, in particular, not making the slightest dent in Washington or New York.

The difference — and the real story here — is that while the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming self-defence, attacked Iran and attacked again, even as Tel Aviv fights with Hamas in Gaza — the classic 2-front situation, and shrugged off US attempts at intervention, Modi gave into Trump without much coaxing and called off Sindoor before it had accomplished anything of note. And this when for Israel, US is a lifeline — for India, only a provider of resident visas for family members of senior GOI and military officers! The poor Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan was left handling the detritus of the Indian government’s buckling under. But, by his own reckoning, was just hitting Pakistani air bases the sole objective of the Operation by which outcome Sindoor is to be judged? That’s what Jaishankar said in Europe! How does it make any military sense to take out Pakistani air defence (SILLACS in Sargodha, etc) and PAF activity, and follow up with doing NOTHING?

It has always been a wonder to me just how quickly the Indian government and establishment folds at the merest hint of US/Western pressure — its own stated policy and the national interest, apparently of no account. This basic weakness at the heart of the Indian system is why India will remain forever — a middling power of little consequence.

It is not just Modi, Indira Gandhi, to remind everybody, was the one who called off — at the very last minute — the Israeli airstrikes in 1982 that were to be staged out of India that I have detailed in my books and in posts on this blog, to bomb Kahuta, and thus taken a nuclearised Pakistan off our concerns. We neither do the job ourselves, nor allow good friends to do it! What we do, however, is pretend and pretend some more about how Great and Good India is, even as a lowly, bankrupt, Pakistan regularly gets up our collective nose.

But, by way of compensating for lack of political will and fortitude to stand up for the national interest, and for genuflecting before Trump, Xi, anybody else, the Indian government keeps denuding the country’s treasury to fund wasteful procurements of useless combat aircraft — more Rafales or F-21s, Su-57s, more this and more that, most of this stuff that the Ukraine War has proved is obsolete, just to give the impression India has a great military — a military that rarely takes the initiative to do anything meaningful on the battlefield, is asked to do nothing meaningful, but merely to look good with new and shiny weaponry!

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Tough Takes on a Tough Neighbourhood — Sindoor Fallout

Posted on June 6, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

This was a June 2, 2025 discussion on Sindoor and its fallout between the two principal discussants hosted by ‘Ignition’ forum under the aegis of the Shiv Nadar Foundation. It may be of interest because Raghavan reflects the MEA’s viewpoint and perspective to a fault! This Ignition event was held at the Westin Hotel in Gurgaon.

[WARNING: I misspoke on the 1965 War — India had 14 DAYS of ammo and spares, when Pakistan was left with only 4-5 days when the ceasefire was called! Sorry about this, it happens in a live discussion!]

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The “48 hours” — is why Munir became a Field Marshal?

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[A properly trim General Asim Munir getting his Field Marshal’s baton from a glum-looking PM, Shebaz Sharif, and an effusively servile, President Asif Ali Zardari — a revealing pic of the investiture ceremony posted by Dr Moeen Pirzada, a Pakistani journalist ]

Some critical bit of information on Op Sindoor has come to hand. The success of the Pakistan Air Force in innovatively using its ex-Chinese JC-10C platform, the PL-15 air-to-air (A2A) longrange missile, and the ex-Swedish Saab 2000 AEWACS (airborne early warning and control system), in bringing down an IAF Rafale outside Bhatinda on May 7, went to Pak army chief General Asim Munir’s head.

Brimming with an excess of confidence, he vaingloriously guaranteed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and senior members of his cabinet that he “would sort out the Indians in 48 hours!” 48 hours!! As promised by Munir, the initiation of his plan for an aerial attack by missiles and drones on important IAF and Indian strategic nodes, was scheduled for 0100 hours May 10.

Unfortunately for Munir, his boastful declaration in Islamabad was picked up by Indian intelligence. And an ambitious counter-plan for a slate of surprise, simultaneous, mass attacks on critical targets was prepared. A combination of Indian fighter aircraft firing Scalp air-to-ground (A2G) missiles and the Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles, and land-based Brahmos went in a little past midnight May 10, and preempted the Pakistani plan. The devastation caused by the Indian attacks spelled the end to Munir’s fanciful strike scheme, resulting in Director General, Military Operations, Pakistan army, Lieutenant General Kashif Abdullah, who had haughtily turned down the Indian DGMO’s offer of ceasefire after Indian missiles had struck Muridke and Bahawalpur on May 7, now called his opposite number Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, waving a white flag.

But, how did this happen?

Because the first wave of missiles destroyed the carefully chosen and strategically crucial target — PAF’s central command, control and communications (C3) centre — the nerve centre of the Pakistan Air Force, housed at the Nur Khan air base in Chaklala, outside Rawalpindi, home also to Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division — the country’s nuclear secretariat. The PAF, it turns out, had no redundant communications setup.

With the entire C3 hub in ruins, the communications links to all the principal PAF air bases hosting combat aircraft, missiles and drones, disappeared as well. These bases were further attrited by the waves of Indian missile and airborne A2G attacks on the bases (Sukkur, Bholari, Jacobabad, et al). The low level air defence SILLACS (Siemens Low Level Air Control System) in Sargodha, it would appear, was separately struck as well.

There was a touch of the usual intra-mural oneupmanship — a feature of all India-Pakistan interactions, in the quiet jubilation at the Indian end, and much satisfaction at Munir and the Pak ‘establishment’ being “sorted out”!

Incidentally, the attack on PAF’s C3 hub at Chaklala collaterally took out a C-130 transporter parked 100 yards away on the tarmac, and the A2G Scalp attack decimated one of the six Saab 2000s parked in the hangar at Bholari. These night time strikes permitted the Pakistanis to clean up the debris at all these stricken airbases before dawn. Two JF-17s may also have been hit.

So, how did the PAF get the Rafale?

The Indian strike sortie comprised the lead Rafale that was to fire its weapon and a buddy Rafale 150 kms to the rear, flying at a higher altitude, and using its radars to scan and surveil the Pakistani airspace to find targets. After finding an appropriate target, the target info was to be transmitted to the lead Rafale for it to engage the enemy. Except, the PAF strike triad, getting inside the IAF sortie’s OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act) Loop, oriented to target and fired before the Rafale pilot could cue to his target. A second can make a world of a difference. That Pak A2A missile brought down the IAF plane.

What is difficult to understand is why the Spectra electronic warfare system on the Rafale failed so miserably in picking up the PAF’s strike triad before the latter homed in for the Rafale kill? Indeed, the Rafale pilot apparently had no reaction time — his radar spotted the incoming PL-15 when the latter was just 50 kms away and moving in fast. 50 kms afforded the IAF pilot just over TWENTY NINE seconds — just enough time to activate his ejection seat and to land safely.

The Spectra EW system in the Rafale was ballyhooed as extremely advanced tech and was supposedly the standout feature of the French aircraft developed by two French companies — Thales and MBDA. But let Wikipedia describe Spectra: “Thales Spectra EW —  Système de Protection et d’Évitement des Conduites de Tir du Rafale (literally: System of Protection and Fire Lines Avoidance of the Rafale) or SPECTRA is a fully internal electronic warfare system jointly developed by Thales Group and MBDA France for the Dassault Rafale. The full SPECTRA integrated electronic warfare suite provides long-range detection, identification and accurate localisation of infrared homing, radio frequency and laser threats. The system incorporates radar warning, laser warning and missile approach warning for threat detection plus a phased array radar jammer and a decoy dispenser for threat countering. It also includes a dedicated management unit for data fusion and reaction decision.” The SPECTRA system also consists of two infrared missile warning sensors. Whew!! Impressive, right?

So, what happened??? Well, SPECTRA did NOT work. And the Indian taxpayer paid Rs 64,000 crores for this junk???.

Munir, in the event, got his Field Marshal’s pips in the main because, after the shooting down of the Rafale, Pakistan impressed every one, and with China and the Chinese media leading the cheering section — JC-10s in the PLAAF, for instance, sported six Rafale decals as kills on the sides of their cockpits (!), and won the military narrative and the regional and international media’s attention. Still, it was for a glaring defeat that Munir becomes Field Marshal?

This is a big IF, but shouldn’t the Indian military have asked Modi to ward off Trump’s pressure for “peace”, and immediately pivoted to a ground offensive to take Haji Pir, and exploited the air superiority achieved by Indian missile strikes by early light, May 10? With Haji Pir in the bag, there would have been no Pakistani pretence of victory, and Munir would have gotten the boot. It would, moreover, have forcefully and permanently rearranged the Pakistan army and government’s thinking about Kashmir, as I had argued when advocating the capture of Haji Pir in my April 30 post. We had large enough forces, including armoured elements, in Uri, Mandi and Poonch to affect such a move.

Did any service chief, any senior military man, alert the Prime Minister the morning of the strikes that such an opportunity had suddenly opened up, and that annexing Haji Pir in POK was at once possible and legally permissible? And, that India need never go back to restoring the status quo ante? I believe not.

This opportunity, alas, may never come again because China will be sure to help plug all the “gaps” revealed by Sindoor in Pakistan’s military capabilities and armed posture

The trouble is the Indian military has never been very nimble and, like the Indian state, can’t seem to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Posted in asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence procurement, Europe, Geopolitics, geopolitics/geostrategy, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indo-Pacific, Intelligence, Internal Security, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Terrorism, United States, US. | Tagged , , , , | 80 Comments

The Dirge after the Drones: A Post-Mortem of Sindoor

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Bharat Karnad

[PM with his war council]

It is as if the Indian government and its media/commentariat echo chamber, have only now — post-Operation Sindoor and, apparently, for the very first time, discovered that it is a cruel, unforgiving, harshly transactionalist world out there! Not a single friendly leader that Modi hugged and cultivated and, to please whom he bought billions of dollars worth of exorbitantly priced armaments from for the Indian armed forces and rescued their defence industries from insolvency at the expense of the indigenously designed and developed weapons systems and a funds-starved Indian defence industry, returned the favour by standing four-square behind him and India.

Or, offered to join in campaigning internationally to put Pakistan in the dock! The fact is MEA will be hard pressed to collect a political consensus to push Pakistan once again into the ‘Grey List’ of the Financial Action Task Force tracking the funding channels benefitting terrorist gangs. Just for context, at, no time, was Pakistan ever in danger of making the ‘Black List’ — not even at the height of the US-led “Global War on Terror” in the wake of 9/11. Because, that would have permanently damaged Pakistan economically, which the US and Western camp will, under no circumstances, permit.

In the event, other than lending a polite ear, it is unlikely the seven Parliamentary teams sallying forth to the various capitals of the world will be able to convince any country of note — but of what?? That Pakistan harbours/nurses Islamist terrorists? No one doubts that. That India was in the right to strike at Pakistan in retaliation? Who contests that? So, what’s this public relations exercise about, other than affording the selected MPs some time in more salubrious climes?

But let us define the setting.

From the moment the Indian missile attack went in and the Muridke and Bahawalpur targets were hit on May 7, and the latest round of India-Pakistan hostilities was on, the main thing that happened was that Pakistan’s nuclear bluff was called. It proved what I have maintained for over three decades in my books and writings — that Pakistan is in no position to trip a nuclear exchange, and that there was a vast nuclear overhang for India to exploit conventionally. But the Indian government and military — listening to the nonsense of nuclear flashpoint and what not emanating from the US and the West, have stayed their hand and encouraged the Pakistan army to believe it is more powerful than it really is, and that it could freely indulge in costless needling of India.

Still, all any body heard from abroad once Indian missiles hit home, were calls for restraint by New Delhi, but there was zero international political support for the job India had undertaken to suppress Islamist terrorism originating in Pakistan. And this mind you, when New Delhi believed it had a cut and dry case — Pakistan-sponsored terrorists killed Indian tourists in Pahalgam after ascertaining their religious identity, and India retaliated with a view to imposing penalties on the Pakistan army for running the terrorist show.

Restraining India seemed to be the objective of almost all Western countries that Modi had hoped would hurrah him along on his mission to snuff out Islamist terrorism. Foreign minister S Jaishankar’s preparing the diplomatic ground in the interim period between Pahalgam and Sindoor for the Indian military reaction, met with no success, only borderline moralising! It goaded a plainly upset Jaishankar, who saw his diplomatic handiwork of several years of a policy of clever-talking unravel in Europe, to reject such official standoffishness on the Pahalgam issue. India wants “partners, not preachers” he harrumphed, missing out on the delicious irony that not too long ago, it was Modi sagely advising Presidents Vlodomyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin, about this not being “an era for war” — a message fecklessly conveyed also to Israel with Gaza on its hands.

Far from securing any backing from Kyiv and Moscow for Modi and India, now it was New Delhi’s turn to get the mealy-mouthed treatment from everyone in sight! Should we be surprised? Such are the perils of being sanctimonious about war. Not appreciating that war is only another instrument of statecraft and that India, in fact, has used it in the past to advance its interests, can result, as in this instance, in its coming back to bite us in our collective arse! Every country that has had to put up with India’s “moral high ground” pronouncements, is enjoying this moment of India’s discomfiture. If this is not schadenfreude, I don’t know what is.

It raises the bigger question: Why did the Indian government act as if it was entitled to international support, to universal accolades, for attacking terrorist strongholds inside Pakistan? After all, everyone is aware that India always shies away from delivering a decisive blow as it did in Sindoor, that it does not really have what it takes to subdue even a minor foe, what to talk of terrorism. And that India and Modi are more talk than action. This being the case, is India worthy of respect from anybody? Manmohan Singh was far worse — he sat mumbling, and did nothing after 26/11 in 2008.

The lamentations in print and on television — boo hoo! — by the lot of high-strung TV hosts and media commentators about India’s abandonment by the big powers, and the world not really giving a damn about what India was doing or not doing vis a vis Pakistan as long as New Delhi did not escalate matters, mask an unpalatable truth. The international community has about had it with the periodic eruptions in the subcontinent, featuring the same tired cycle of terrorism, blood-curdling rhetoric followed by military actions and reactions with negligible effect that the jingoistic press and media on either side, hyperbolise with unbelievable claims and counter-claims, followed by an abrupt end to hostilities, and a return to the status quo ante, with the original problem remaining largely unaddressed!

How is any of this serious stuff? Because even as a pantomime a 3-day “war” amounts to silliness.

Having taken the offensive, India should have done something hefty as a follow-up to hitting Muridke and Bahawalpur. Like permanently wrenching the Haji Pir Salient and/or Skardu from Pakistan’s grasp, and promising more such territory-grabbing ventures in the future as response to terrorist incidents, until little is left of PoK with Pakistan. Because India did not opt for an intense land war and failed to cut off big slices of Pakistani territory, the Pakistan army gloried in India’s incapacity to do any such thing or even to impose huge costs. It has, in fact, incentivised General Asim Munir to persist with his policy of deploying terrorists in Kashmir — the next terrorist incident is not far round the corner, daring India to do its worst — which GHQ, Rawalpindi, believes it will be able easily to handle as it has done so many times in the past. On the other hand, India’s campaign of taking out the terrorist leaders residing in Pakistan one or two at a time, is obviously not a deterrent enough.

But given its institutional tendency to do everything by half-measures, the Indian government finds itself once again between and betwixt — and in something of a military and political jam. Why?

Firstly, because Trump — with whom, according to foreign minister Jaishankar, Modi has a “personal relationship”, turned rogue and the tables on India. Unbidden, he intervened as a “peace maker”, and decreed an end to the India-Pakistan clash. Such tactics ran into a wall on the Russia-Ukraine Front. With India, predictably, Trump had instant success. Modi buckled under immediately and, just like that, New Delhi accepted a 3rd party — US — role in the affairs of India. And, 30 years of Indian diplomatic effort — a good part of it managed by Jaishankar with the 2008 nuclear deal as its crowning achievement, to de-hyphenate India and Pakistan in the policy matrices of a whole bunch of Western countries New Delhi considers important, went down the drain.

The Modi government tried to wipe the egg off its face for succumbing so easily to the barest American pressure, by futilely challenging the Trump thesis that Modi and Sharif had approached him to mediate — a blatant lie, of course. The MEA pointed out, with chronological referencing, that it was the Pakistan army’s Director General, Military Operations, who called his Indian counterpart on May 9 about a ceasefire, which was not formally accepted until the next day. Even if Trump was irrelevant to the situation, the question is, why was the Pakistani offer of ceasefire accepted at all?

Because even then India could have restored some self-respect by insisting, that its military would stop when New Delhi decided Pakistan had been punished enough, that is after, say, Haji Pir was in Indian hands — however long it took to accomplish that, and that it was not for the US or any third party, without any locus standi in the matter, to dictate anything. The end-state of this to-ing and fro-ing suggests the ceasefire was accepted because of the firman from Trump, which incidentally fits in with the timeline!

The issue then is Trump’s firman to stop firing, which Shehbaz Sharif speedily accepted. Why was it issued when it was? Was it because by May 9, it became clear to Washington, as it did to Munir & Company, that with their amply depleted stock of missiles, if India continued with the pace of missile firings that peaked on May 10, Pakistan would have no option other than to wave the white flag? Indeed, according to Dr Moeen Pirzada, one of the better informed telejournalists, that point of surrender would have been reached by Pakistan by May 12 at the latest. (See https://youtu.be/gLt6MFzLdkQ). If Dr Pirzada had this information, how come RAW or Air Intel/Military Intel did not? And if they did, and had conveyed it to the Modi regime, then things turn darker. But the Indian military’s calling it a day just when the enemy is on the point of giving up, is also part of an old pattern. Recall that India announced a ceasefire in the 1965 War when Pakistan had run down their stocks of spares and stuff to one week’s supply and the Indian military still had 14 days worth left (according to the Indian Official History of that war).

In this context, it is not clear what to make of Rajnath Singh’s statement that the stoppage of hostile actions is just a pause. If this means India suddenly igniting another round, hey, …. we’ll wait and see. For my money, it means nothing — just another emission of hot air.

By May 9, however, the international media line was established by the maddeningly impulsive Trump who, displayed the special brand of viciousness he reserves for his supposed friends. He not only repeated his claim that he had engineered the ceasefire by invitation, but embarrassed Modi some more by doubling down on his revelation that he had used trade as lever to get Modi in line, with nary a mention anywhere of the Pakistani terrorist incident that had sparked the Indian response in the first place, which would have laid the blame for Pahalgam at Islamabad’s door. So, this is the story our circumambulating MPs will try and squelch. Except, these trips are not worth the money being spent, because their arguments will sway no government.

All this is significant only because Modi, now in his 3rd term as PM, has put so much store by intimate relations with America as a means of displacing Pakistan in Washington’s affections and in the US’ security architecture in Asia — a ridiculous venture considering Pakistan, as I keep pointing out, is indispensable to America — its selling points being its comprehensive weakness and manipulability — qualities that Islamabad has, time and again, cashed in on. Until now when it is not the nuclear overhang that saves Pakistan from condign Indian punishment but Washington standing in the way. And India has lacked a strong leader to ward off American pressures.

Does Modi want to make India bend to Washington’s every whim, as Pakistan happily does? Not that the Indian government has not done so repeatedly in the last 30 years, but it will have to become more conspicuously subservient, in the manner Islamabad is. That is how Trump likes it. This is surely not what Modi desires for India.

In that case, Modi has, for starters, to reverse what Piyush Goel, the Commerce Minister, has done by agreeing to all sorts of provisions in the draft Free Trade Agreement with the US inimical to Indian national interest, that is replicating the disastrous FTA he has obtained with the UK, where British companies will be allowed to bid for all Government of India contracts amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and is a deathknell for Indian industry. Modi should simply junk the proposed FTAs with the US, and with its sidekick, UK. And take it from there.

And Modi has to begin straight talking with Trump and without the usual frills. This has so far not happened. May be the PM has to bear the late Henry Kissinger’s warning in mind when dealing with the US, and especially Trump, that to be America’s enemy is dangerous, to be America’s friend is fatal!

Then there’s the Indian military’s performance.

The “three day” war, besides its joining the annals of military absurdity, has brought into question the lead service in Op Sindoor, the Indian Air Force’s competence in air operations. IAF’s coordinated effort with the army to put up an air defence wall against Pakistani missiles, however, was a great success and immensely laudable. In contrast, the radars attached to the Chinese HQ-9 and HQ-16 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) on Pakistan’s side proved a damp squib — they picked up no Indian incoming.  

However, in air ops, it was a different story. In the very first hours of the operation a number of IAF combat aircraft were shot down — the question is: Which aircraft and how many? Pakistan claims downing five Indian fighter planes — 3 Rafales, 1 Su-30 and 1 Mirage 2000. The IAF/GOI have been quiet on this subject, suggesting that the claims may not all be a figment of Fizaya’s imagination. The IAF’s operations in-charge, Air Marshal AK Bharti, cannot brush of such catastrophe as the usual “losses” in war. Rafales were shot down for sure, otherwise the Rafale squadrons would not have been grounded after that first awful day apparently for fear of losing more aircraft.

Much worse, the IAF is so fixated on manned aircraft, it did not foresee the exorbitantly priced French Rafale as a fading asset in the coming age of longrange missiles. And, much, much worse, it did not anticipate how the Pakistan Air Force would innovatively use its Chinese and Swedish assets — the J-10C medium multi-role fighter, its consequential longrange weapon — the Chinese P-15E air-to-air (A2A) missile, and the Saab Erieye AWACS. Why did no one in IAF focus on such use of Chinese assets by PAF? Isn’t it the Air Intelligence’s job — assuming it has any sources in Pakistan independent of other intel agencies, to intimate what the PAF was up to, and for the Ops directorate to factor in this intel for action with adequate countermeasures before sending up the Rafales to do Beyond Visual Range combat, or did everybody really expect that there would be the old style dogfights?

Moreover, high attrition rates seem by now to be an IAF standard — recall the first day of the Kargil conflict — 2 aircraft went down — a helicopter and a Mig-21. And we were told then that, that was because the IAF had not practised combat operations in the mountains! With one of the two live fronts entirely mountainous, what air war actually was the IAF preparing for?! What excuse will Air HQ come up this time around for losing however many high value aircraft in Sindoor. Will they at least show some slight humility, even professionalism, and conclude, albeit belatedly, that Rafale was redundant to need, and that the indigenous Tejas would have done just as well as a weapons carrier — and what matters is the A2A radar-guided Meteor missile. And that, this missile integrated with Tejas would form a more cost-effective combo than the Rafale-Meteor tandem. And if the French missile firm, MBDA, is reluctant to mesh the Meteor with Tejas, France can be told to take their 36 Rafales and shove it. And, in any case, one would expect the IAF to terminate importing this over-hyped plane to meet its so-called Medium Fighter Aircraft requirement, when Tejas is available.

Not sure why the IAF and the Indian government are so squeamish about cornering a supplier country-France/company- Dassault Avions, and demanding they — the sellers — do what we — the buyers, customer — want, and have us routinely take dictation from them, as is the case at present.

If the air chief ACM Amar Preet Singh doesn’t initiate such professionally necessary moves, one hopes there are enough sensible people in the Prime Minister’s Office to put an end to India buying more Rafale for any reason — the least of them to meet the IAF’s extremely questionable medium fighter aircraft requirement. Especially, with the home-made Tejas, also a 4.5 generation fighter aircraft, that will fare better as well in war and can be mass produced by parcelling out big Tejas production contracts, as I have been pleading for years, to private corporations to compel the defence public sector unit — HAL, known mainly for shoddily screwdrivered aircraft to, for the first time, face competition. In a fair competition, HAL will be beaten to a pulp by L&T and/or Tata. (I am not mentioning the Defence Ministry under Rajnath Singh because as defence minister he has revealed himself as too much in thrall to the babus to push anything genuinely strategic for the country.)

And, no, Lockheed’s salivating at replacing Rafale in the IAF fleet with the F-35 with Trump’s help, and the assistance of many serving IAF officers and a load of retired Air Marshals, will hopefully only remain an American dream. Because the F-35, an even more calamitously bad combat aircraft, will be the worst sort of nightmare in Indian service. The IAF’s reputation, already in a dive, will be impossible then to rescue — what to talk of the hit the Indian treasury will take. Modi should tell Trump — No, thankyou, keep the F-35 to yourself. The trouble lies in Modi’s inordinate desire to please America, to be in Trump’s good books, and that’s the joker in the pack.

There are many in the higher reaches of the government and the military, who disrespect Russian military hardware. The effective layered air defence provided by the S-400 must has rattled them a bit. Along with the locally-produced Akash surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), the air wall shut out the Pakistani missiles — reason why Indian airbases and military facilities were not hit in any big way, and not for want of Pakistani forces desperately firing off ordnance at them.

Not too long ago, an insufferable NRI type visiting India — Mukesh Aghi, “President” of some non-government entity called “US-India Strategic Partnership Forum”, declared that India should “play a pivotal role in rebuilding America” and to “Align yourself with what Trump is trying to achieve, which is America First”!!! One can but pray that Aghi’s agenda is NOT Modi’s agenda.

Perhaps, the PMO, MEA and every other agency of the Indian government should hang big boards in their offices saying “AMERICA IS NO ONE’S FRIEND, TRUMP IS NO ONE’S BUDDY” — a line from one of my posts after Trump’s election in November last year. And to craft India’s foreign and military policies accordingly.

A sidebar: Two more interviews that may be of interest: (1) a podcast on ‘Op Sindoor: India signals new war doctrine to Pakistan’ on the May 16, 2025 podcast — ‘The Federal’ conducted by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLUyfOcq640, and (2) an interview by Rashme Sehgal, INTERVIEW: ‘India Should Never Fight Indecisive ‘Wars’ With Pakistan’ published in ‘Newsclick’, May 16, 2025, at https://www.newsclick.in/interview-india-should-never-fight-indecisive-wars-pakistan

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