Month: May 2025

Not out of weakness, but calculation. It’s waiting for the international community to bribe it into silence. One advantage of being quasi-democratic (like Russia or China) is the ability to sideline public opinion. Pakistan can afford to wait. India, by contrast, appears to be following an Israel-style doctrine. But Pakistan is more Prussia than Palestine and Modi feels much weaker from this episode (he promised a safe Kashmir).

Competing regional giants and nuclear powers, India and China are widely seen as long-term strategic rivals, sharing a 3,800 km (2,400 mile) Himalayan border that has been disputed since the 1950s and sparked a brief war in 1962. The most recent standoff began in 2020 and thawed only in October 2023, when both sides agreed to a formal patrolling agreement, placing limits on forward deployment and coordinated disengagement. Even between nuclear-armed antagonists, restraint is possible when war threatens mutual prosperity.

Likewise, Putin’s behavior post-Maidan in 2014 was not immediate escalation. Instead, Crimea was seized swiftly, but Russia spent eight years supporting separatists and waging hybrid war in Donbas before launching a full-scale invasion in 2022. It was restraint with intent, waiting for the West to appear divided or distracted.

It’s strange that every time the region stabilizes, something reignites tension. Why would China, India, or Pakistan want instability when wealth and growth depend on peace? Yet here we are.

The BJP base craves nothing short of Pakistan’s annihilation. That’s a fantasy; militarily, diplomatically, and strategically. Why shouldn’t India fully cooperate in an international investigation to determine who was behind the Pahalgam attack? The refusal suggests this moment is being used as a casus belli; leveraging the incident to project force in a world increasingly shaped by Trumpian-Putinesque instincts.

Even the postponement of the IPL was an indirect consequence of what Pakistan could do. This is not a toothless state. Pakistan is David with a nuke or more accurately, an incidental Prussia, hyper-militarized but calculating. The public isn’t rising up against its military; if anything, this round has shown that Pakistan can restrain itself without looking weak.

In fact, Pakistan has consistently been the more restrained nuclear power. Israel has spent two years trying to flatten Gaza with limited success. The U.S. stayed in Afghanistan and Iraq far too long, trapped by asymmetric warfare. These are textbook examples of tactical response leading to strategic drift.

Modi should study those cases. Retaliation may thrill headlines. But strategy lies in staying still until the storm passes and only then, deciding if and how to move.

On Pakistan’s second birth, India’s rising nationalism, and the politics of martyrdom

There’s a strange irony in history: the founder of Pakistan and the “strongest” Prime Minister of India may ultimately be remembered for the same thing—giving Pakistan life.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah birthed the state. Narendra Modi may have revived its soul. Because nothing steels a national identity like resistance. And nothing immortalizes a cause like martyrdom.

Blood in Pahalgam, Resolve in Islamabad

When civilians—children—are killed, as in the recent attacks in Pahalgam & Bahawalpur, the horror doesn’t demoralize. It clarifies. It creates martyrs. And martyrdom sanctifies. Pakistan, often in search of a purpose, just received one. What makes this even more striking is the dynamic behind it. Modi may need Pakistan—not as a partner, but as a perpetual foil. A pressure point. A mirror. A justification.Every strong nationalism needs its adversary:

• Israel has Hamas.
• The U.S. had the USSR.
• India, increasingly, needs Pakistan.

Nationhood hardens in opposition. This is what the “failed” projects of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia lacked: no existential other. No enemy, no glue. Even the most successful Willensnation—Switzerland, a country built by choice, not ethnicity—engaged in intense nation-building during the 1960s. Its wealth today isn’t just neutrality—it’s the compound interest of skipping two world wars. But in today’s world, Dubai may inherit Switzerland’s darker mantle—as the future capital of hot money and global shadow finance. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Canada’s national identity has paradoxically strengthened in Trump’s wake—a quiet rebellion through civility, as if to say: we are what he is not.

The Strategic Misstep?

Operation Sindoor. Suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. Visa blocks. High Commission closures. Are these pressure points—or accelerants? The danger is that such moves only validate Pakistan’s siege narrative. And that narrative fuels its resilience. You can’t bomb a martyr complex. You can only confirm it. Continue reading Quaid, Modi, and the Operation Sindoor

These thoughts emerged as I was replying to the 100+ comments on Omar’s post, India and Pakistan, Back to the Future..

Flight, Fragility, and the First Bollywood Snake

My first memories of Pakistan are tangled with flight and childhood fiction. In 1990, as we escaped Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion, our car crossed into Pakistani Baluchistan carrying five adults and three children. After over a month in Iran (the family gardens of Shiraz are a blurry childhood memory), where we were understandably low-key about being Bahá’ís, I remember yelling out the car window the moment we crossed the border, “I’m Bahá’í! I’m Bahá’í!” My family laughed (I was the youngest and always the most impetuous). The story has been retold so often I don’t know where memory ends and performance begins.

But the innocence of that moment gave way quickly. I remember the poverty at the border: raw, overwhelming on both sides of Baluchistan. And then, in Karachi, came my first exposure to India—through a Bollywood film featuring a dancing girl in a Sari transforming into a snake. That, more than any textbook, was my introduction to Hinduism. Try as it might, Pakistan is the ineffable portal to Hindustan, a mirror that reflects what it cannot contain. These memories—flight, fragility, and fantasy—etched into me the idea that culture moves where politics cannot.

Restraint Is the Strategy: Rethinking Peace in South Asia

South Asia is home to nearly 2 billion people. It’s a region of nuclear states, frozen conflicts, and postcolonial trauma. Yet every time a cross-border terrorist attack kills 20 or 30 civilians, it makes global headlines. That’s not just because of the violence—but because the violence is rare. This isn’t an excuse. It’s a signal: South Asia has already learned restraint. The question is whether it can remember why.

The Bug in the Democratic Mind

After 9/11, the U.S. was angry. George W. Bush gave the people what they wanted: a war. Two, actually. Instead of a tactical mission to dismantle a terrorist network, America destabilized entire regions, wasted trillions, and incubated future threats.

This is the paradox of democracy:

• Populations demand retribution.

• Leaders comply.

• Strategy is hijacked by spectacle.

India must adopt a radically different approach. Treat Pakistan the way South Korea treats North Korea: sidestep, outperform, outgrow. Engagement legitimizes provocation. Retaliation restores parity. Indifference signals dominance. Continue reading Let Pakistan Throw Stones. India Should Build the Skyline.