Geo-strategic calculus of Pakistan and India | The Express Tribune

Sindoor 1.0 was a failure, but it was not given a state burial. Modi administration wants Sindoor 2.0 so that both misadventures can be cremated in a single pyre.

Meanwhile, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, in his delusional and dangerously revisionist remarks, has uttered that “Sindh will always be a part of India —borders can change —tomorrow Sindh may return to India again.” Top Indian officials have been uttering such gibberish since their May defeat, but Pakistan cannot simply overlook a mad elephant trampling in fury right next door. The fury can very well be the bugle call for war!

So, the two states are currently in a race; not particularly an arms-race, rather a race for structural enhancement in their forces, so that in a coming conflict they are better equipped to fight a 6th Generation War.

As early as in July, India announced new Rudra Brigades, a combination of infantry, armor, artillery, special forces and unmanned aerial systems; and Bhairav Battalions, composed of agile and lethal Light Commandos. Both these structures will be deployed along the China and Pakistan borders with enhanced future-oriented combat readiness.

The problem is that these brigades and battalions will only give tactical enhancement to the Indian Forces, meaning that they will be better equipped to destroy and defeat enemy formations, seize terrain or protect units, in direct combat. But in the May War, tactical encounters were only a backdrop, while the real battle inflicted by the Pakistani Forces upon India was a theater-level, multi-domain, beyond-visual-range, operational-level, 6GW.

Pakistan multidomain operations integrated their cruise and ballistic missiles systems with electronic warfare capabilities linked with Chinese satellite surveillance. Using Chinese origin jets, missiles and satellite systems enabled spotless integration and successful targeting. The Cyber Force supplemented the act by compromising key military and governmental infrastructure, rendering them blind to the actively hitting adversary.

India, in spite of its $74 billion defence budget, dwarfing Pakistan’s $9 billion, could not reciprocate because its Rafale jets were from France, its S-400 air defence system was from Russia, its GPS was American and their integration failed under operational pressure.

And whereas India has announced new brigades and battalion, Pakistan has again proven to be miles ahead by announcing a new Rocket Force, imitating the Chinese Rocket Force, and is poised to be equipped with ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles. The Force will have land, air and sea components completing Pakistan’s nuclear triad if needed. And the Force will be integrated with theater commands; rather it will be the major element of integration.

In fact, because the Rocket Force is thought to be directly inspired by the Chines Rocket Force, it is being foreseen that Pakistan will soon be acquiring J-35 5G fighters, the HQ-19 anti-ballistic missile systems and KJ-500 Airborne Warning and Control System, highly upgrading the J-10C jets and PL-15 missiles combo previously used.

Perhaps India’s lacking is due to geopolitical factors. Seeing itself as a ‘competitor’ of China, a dream that was fed by Obama’s Asia Pivot Policy, and US presentation of India as the ‘net security-provider’ of the Indian Ocean Region is a dream India is still living, even after the Galwan conflict with China and the May 2025 awakening. Knowing well that it does not have the military might nor the security architecture nor the strategic autonomy that China has, it still poses to confront China, and continues to threaten Pakistan, a strategic ally of China. This stubborn egoism of India has put it into a unilateral isolationism that bars it from partaking in the integration of the Global South with China’s Global Development and Security Initiatives.

For decades India has tried to isolate Pakistan, both diplomatically and strategically. India’s refusal to participate in SAARC; its forceful exclusion of Pakistan from the Indian Ocean Rim Association; its strategic alliance with the US wherein both states have repeated issued joint-statements accusing Pakistan of harboring terrorism; its backing of terrorist and separatism in Pakistan; and now its audacity of committing so-called surgical strikes inside Pakistan’s sovereign boundaries and threatening to do more —all show the vengeance India holds against Pakistan. But the same vengeance, the insane dream of Akand Bharat, and enmity for China have rendered India into an isolated and injured giant forced to lick its own wounds.

The diplomatic isolation of India is even more painful. Not only does it feel like an outsider in BRICS and SCO, it has also been distanced from its most prized ally, the US. Pakistan’s Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia has also jeopardised the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, because now Saudi Arabia has committed to attack anyone who attacks Pakistan.

Modi regime’s extremist Hindutva ideology, and its vision of Akhand Bharat, a large landmass, that includes present-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tibet, makes all of India’s neighbours weary of it. The fear of India’s imperial ambitions has driven them towards the equality-based, shared-development offered by China.

The sad thing is that the people of India, around 800 million of whom live in poverty, really deserve more of the peace, welfare and development being offered by China. But India’s political elite will not choose welfare for its people, rather it will choose to lock horns with stronger neighbours.

Why is India unable to calculate its strategic calculus vis a vis Pakistan and China? Is it Modi’s personal ego, or is it the force of RSS’ Hindutva ideology that is overbearing upon Indian conscience? Does Hindutva define India or is it abducting India’s real identity —which was supposed to be philosophical, meditative, humanistic and naturalistic.?

Whatever the reason, India’s dyscalculia around the geostrategic calculus, both regional and global, will only move it further away from the peace and hiatus needed for the welfare, progress and sustainable future of its people —a future its 1.46 billion people truly deserve, a future that will potentially be crushed under the wheels of the imperial lust that grinds in the minds of India’s imperialist elites.