At the international level too, India failed to garner the unqualified support and validation it so desperately sought. The international community’s attention is already consumed by the volatile Middle East, especially Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the evolving strategic environment in the Pacific Ocean Region (POR), and the baffling Trade and Tariff War unleashed by President Trump on the world as a whole. It could have done without yet another distraction, especially one that could potentially lead to a nuclear conflagration in a very sensitive, hostile, belligerent, and congested strategic environment. Three of the world’s most formidable military-nuclear-missile powers have a serious clash of vital national interests in the larger Kashmir region — China, India, and Pakistan! India is faced with a multiple front war in Kashmir — Pakistan, China, and a destabilised inner front that could upend its base of operations, main supply routes, and lines of communication. India’s forces would also be spread thin as it has to look after the borders with Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and even distant Maldives too. Furthermore, IIOJ&KR lies sandwiched between Pakistan and China who literally sit on both its flanks. In a grand pincer movement, they could potentially endeavour to meet somewhere in the IIOJ&KR! Period. A war between India and either Pakistan or China could potentially suck in the other one too. A three-front war, as such, could actually force India’s hand, and hostilities could spiral up the escalation ladder very rapidly to mutually assured destruction (MAD) levels. The belligerents, the region, and the world can all ill afford such a horrendous, existential eventuality. Therefore, the UN and the international community repeatedly offered mediation, counselled patience, restraint, talks, and a peaceful resolution of the issue. India, however, did not budge.
However, in its desperation for international endorsement, India even tried to equate the Pahalgam incident with the Hamas attack on Israel on 07 October 2023. It pathetically tried to portray itself as Israel and the so-called terrorists as Hamas. Furthermore, it blamed Pakistan for the travesty and expected the US-led West to support it in the same manner that Israel has been supported since. It tried to play the “victim card”, à la Israel, but failed miserably. Israel has a carte blanche for its operations against Hamas, Gazans, Palestinians in the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, etc., literally in the whole Greater Middle East Region (GMER). All its actions therein are accepted as “self-defence” by the US-led West. India expected similar treatment. It was in for a very rude shock. It must have painfully dawned upon it that it is no Israel, that nuclear Pakistan is no Hamas, and that the international community is actually not that naïve and/or gullible, after all!
India is a strategic ally and major defence partner of the US, a member of the QUAD and the I2U2 groupings, and has formalised at least four very important foundational agreements with it. It is buying sophisticated weapons, equipment, and technologies from the US, which has even offered it the latest F-35 aircraft as well. After the debacle that the IAF suffered at the hands of the irresistible PAF on the night of 6–7 May 25, PM Modi might give this offer some very serious consideration. However, it will not come without some very long strings attached. As a strategic ally, India was expected to dutifully pursue US interests in the Asia-Pacific Region and the GMER. The US’ focus is on two major strategic issues: one, containing and managing the rise of China; and two, the elimination of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, in totality. The US might have expected India to help create the environment for attaining these vital US objectives. However, India appears obsessed and fixated upon Pakistan and has now clashed with it — against all international advice and warnings. This goes against US interests in these regions, as it not only takes the focus away from China and Iran but could also push Pakistan irretrievably into China’s embrace. Furthermore, an Indo-Pakistan conflict could ominously instigate a nuclear conflagration in the SAR. There is a clear and present divergence of interests here between the US and India. The latter might have grossly miscalculated its stature, importance, and clout in this relationship.
The glaring mismatch between India’s real power potential and its strategic ambitions needed to be evaluated in the contexts of the real, obtaining strategic environment, the prevailing regional strategic balance (with China, Pakistan separately and/or both together), and the cost-benefit analysis of all military (mis)adventures. PM Modi and his coterie of advisers missed this paradigm. He has become a victim of his own rhetoric, his party’s political and ideological sloganeering, and the vile, hysterical harangues of the Indian media. He now finds himself in a veritable strategic cul-de-sac with nary a viable option available. Had he not undertaken any military operations/surgical strikes against Pakistan, as he had so often and so vociferously threatened to, then he would have not only lost face domestically — within his own party too — and might even have lost the crucial elections in Bihar. He, however, felt compelled to attack Pakistan and has thus far suffered even more serious reverses than in February 2019. Déjà vu?
The limits to India’s power potential and its ability to project it have been exposed. Ominously, this brutal face-off could end up with both belligerents flirting with nuclear thresholds and exuding existential ramifications for themselves and the SAR at large! Is PM Modi now wary of trusting his rearmed, re-equipped, and reinforced armed forces? Is a challenge to his leadership lurking in the shadows?
Imran Malik
The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army. He can be reached at im.k846@gmail.com and tweets @K846Im.
