India has ZERO leverage over Pakistan or China, and we’ve been scared to get our hands dirty

Won’t we all like to teach Pakistan a lesson? Ceasefire violations, killing lakhs of innocents, occupying Indian territory, gifting Indian territory to China, orchestrating terrorism on Indian soil … Pakistan has always behaved badly, and will go on to behave this way. Now it should not shock the Indian establishment, at least this much should be the lesson. Pakistan will not wake up one day and decide to bury it’s enmity with India. That day will never come. “Aman Ki Aasha” is a mirage, to engage the fools. There’s no point chasing it.

The problem is that India despite being several times prosperous, stable and powerful than Pakistan – doesn’t have any leverage over Pakistan. So tactically we’re much weaker from war point of view. And this is a shame. Indian establishment can take all the credit for bringing India to a point where entire world sees India as a potential super power of the future – but has completely lost in generating leverage in it’s own neighbourhood. We’re failing with Pakistan and we are failing with China.

We allowed Pakistan to acquire Nuclear bomb. Biggest Mistake. A country with the GDP compared to Uganda is a Nuclear power today. The same country is also the hot ground for flourishing Islamic terrorism. Pakistan is also in the works of building smaller nuclear warheads, which will be even more prone to falling into terror hands. First target will always be India. Because of this Pakistan has big leverage over India and no accountabilty. On any given day, India would be more worried about the safety of it’s citizens than Pakistan.

Can India afford a war with Pakistan?

Today if we attack Pakistan to retrieve POK – China will open a front on India in the North East – we have all seen a preview of that during Chinese president’s Indian tour. It’s a very real threat. India can take on Pakistan any given day, but can India handle wars on two fronts with both Pak and China (and both of them are nuclear powers)? What India should have been working all these years was to create tension on other frontiers of Pakistan & China. Pre-emptive Offensive has been completely missing from India’s strategy. We’d rather plead for justice and peace.

However angry we get with the shameless denials and attacks by Pakistan – a war with Pakistan today will halt Indian development story. And Pakistan an already failed state won’t lose anything. They don’t care if their citizens die of bombs or poverty. In fact, casualties on their side will give Pakistan (and the likes of Hafeez Said and Al-Qa’ida) more propaganda material against India. Pak army knows this and is therefore have been itching for India to shoot the first bullet.

You shame those who have anything to lose

India has always been relying on shaming Pakistan – and this strategy has failed massively. You could call it the naivety of Indian government over the years. We should have woken up from Gandhi’s hangover post independence and should have started behaving like a country with some spine. Instead, we joined Non-Alignment Movement under Nehru – whatever happened to that. We gifted our security council seat to China. We kept looking towards Papa USA and Uncle UN to see and judge the misdeeds of Pakistan. We didn’t realize that in the real world you have to fight your own fights. You have to take the risk of being called the bad guy. You have to take the risk of getting your hands dirty.



All major powers of the world have been the aggressors – USA, UK, Russia and now China is also moving towards the same pattern in foreign policy – while maintaining the democratic appearances. Either eat or be eaten. India should never have been looking towards the west in creating pressure on Pakistan. Western powers had their own private pacts going on with Pak – India looked more like a whiny little kid, who always needed help. Even the most recent talks with USA have not succeeded in building anything concrete against Pakistan. USA will take it’s own sweet time and will carefully gauge it’s own interest in the region. USA will probably end up using India as a pawn in South Asia again.

Pak has way more leverage on India and that makes it cocky

Pakistan on the other hand has several fronts open against India:

1. China being an all weather ally, who also has it’s interest aligned against India.
2. Then there’s aid from USA, which according to several findings is being directed against India.
3. From elected government to ISI all answer to Pak Army, which is accountable to nobody. This gives all plausible deniability to Pak establishment.
4. Pak media and education system has twisted facts enough, that it’s a breeding ground for creating more mujahideen terrorists who grow up hating India and Indians.
5. Pakistan has successfully created home-grown networks of terrorism in India.
6. Narendra Modi could issue public statements of how he has trust in India Muslims. But the actions of Indian Muslims predict a rather dicey future. When the Muslim youth of educated background can get attracted to ideologies like ISIS and Al-Qaeda, nothing can be predicted with much surety. And India does have a large population of Muslims (even more than Pakistan) … and most of these have familial ties with residents of Pakistan. It can be predicted that a large percentage of Indian Muslims will be soft on Pakistan if the war ever happens.
7. Lastly, Pakistan being a failed state already doesn’t have much expectations or pressure internally, to perform. Statements against India and dreams of freeing Kashmir is enough to rile up it’s citizens to support a war.

India is in a really shitty situation as far as it’s neighbours are concerned. Modi government realises these facts and has therefore taken calibrated steps in strengthening India’s ties in it’s neighbourhood. Every ally counts – even the smaller ones. But that might not be enough. How India postures itself against Pakistan will send a message to China. A stronger assertive India means India can’t be pushed around. But if we keep reeling under pressure of terrorism hoping somebody will come and help us – then China will consider Indian territory a fair-game for future annexation.

India needs to wake up from it’s Gandhian hangover

India needs to realize that other countries don’t share your Gandhian values. So, stop preaching the world, because in real world, self interest always comes first. Though India should have realised this decades ago, but a course correction can still be done. What India needs to do is to be ready to play the games of it’s neighbours and shamelessly at that. National security comes first – before all principles and all PR. Learn it from Israel. If UN had to intervene in Kashmir issue, it would have done it a long time ago. Facts have been available always. Instead it was busy toe-ing the line and interests of USA in this region.

As an Indian citizen you should ask that,

• Why is Indian intelligence not as destructive and fear-inducing as Pakistan’s?
• Why can’t Indian army too infiltrate Pakistan and Indian government deny as if nothing is happening? Even China is using such tactics, why can’t we play these games?
• Why can’t India work towards building new technologies in weapons more suited to our needs? We have created Mangalyaan on a meagre budget right? Why do we always need to buy last decade’s weapon technologies from USA and Russia?
• Why aren’t we trying to bleed Pakistan and China with a thousand cuts too?
• Why aren’t we building infrastructure to weaken Pakistan and China from inside? They have exported Terrorism and Maoism to India right?
• Why does India always need to be on the defensive?

Our race to development can be very easily cut short by regional unrest. India can’t afford to close it’s eyes and recite Gandhian prose and hope everything will be fine. National security will have to go hand in hand with Development. They may clap loud for India’s motherhood statements of world peace and prosperity, but don’t truly respect a country which can’t stand high to secure it’s own borders. So, far the state of  “high moral ground” hasn’t bore any fruits. India needs to get her hands dirty, there’s no other option.

Written by Ishaan Mohan Bagga

Political Analyst. Social Visionary. Editorial Journalist. Founder of open-magazine Indian Exponent.

Follow him on twitter @IshaanMohan