The approach that led to the recently unveiled Board of Peace ‘plan’ stands in such stark contrast with the sustained diplomacy preceding the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt that a visit to the historic moment of 1978 may be instructive.

On September 5, 1978, when three world leaders—the US President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and their delegations—arrived at the Camp David presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of northern Maryland to work toward forging peace in the Middle East, no one had any illusions about the intractable nature of the problem. But even that assessment appeared inadequately realistic once the talks began. The two sides banged tables, competed in shouting matches, regularly stormed out of the room, and mouthed bitter recriminations against each other. For 13 days, frustration enveloped the proceedings.

Towards the end, the tortuous negotiations were threatening to run aground and create a permanent impasse. Carter even sequestered the bickering sides for 10 days and met the two leaders individually. Carter’s personal secretary, Susan Clough, suggested a small gesture to arrest the collapse. She had the President sign copies of a photograph of the three leaders as a gift to Begin’s grandchildren. Each copy carried the child’s name and the inscription ‘with love’.

The gesture moved Begin and, arguably, softened him enough to tip the summit toward agreement; on day 12, the Israeli leader agreed to let the Knesset vote on whether to dismantle Jewish settlements in the Sinai. That unlocked the path to an agreement reached on 17 September 1978 after 23 revised drafts. Begin agreed to relinquish the entire Sinai Peninsula, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, and Egypt restored full diplomatic relations with Israel. It is an arrangement that has lasted nearly five decades.

But the Camp David Accords were not built on a single gesture. These were tightly scoped, bilateral negotiations with a single mediator who had worked hard in search of practicable solutions. The talks were not performative, designed for dramatic media splashes. The architecture was created painstakingly for lasting peace. On September 17, 2003—25 years to the day when the accords were signed—members of the three delegations even reunited at the Woodrow Wilson Center for an event organized by the Carter Center to commemorate this unprecedented moment in history.

The Board of Peace plan represents a different approach. It is a sprawling, multi-party, multi-conflict institution built on shifting coalitions and unresolved core disputes. Its members have been selectively invited and asked to pay a billion dollars each if they want membership to outlast the standard three-year term. Several leading nations either declined or were not invited. There are no Palestinian representatives on the body that is to ‘decide’ their future.

The contrast between the deal brokered at Camp David and the Board of Peace proposal could not be starker. The 1978 agreement came about after 14 months of sustained, high-level diplomatic groundwork; the Board of Peace process appears to have unfolded through a diffuse sequence: a 20-point plan in September 2025, followed by a formal charter, a UN Security Council resolution in November 2025, an inaugural board meeting in Davos, and a 15-point disarmament roadmap negotiated separately with Hamas through Egyptian, Qatari, and Turkish intermediaries in mid-2026. At no stage did Israel and the US directly sit across a table with Hamas.

In one sense, the Camp David process had a lower and, therefore, more accessible ambition. It could dodge the question of Palestinian self-determination entirely, and stick to the narrow lane of achieving a bilateral Egypt-Israel treaty covering Sinai withdrawal and normalization. It tackled a more “doable” problem. But the Board of Peace must confront the Palestinian governance question; a vacuum after Israelis withdraw is not tenable.

The current mediation structure bears no resemblance to the more formalized effort led by Carter; he was bringing together two sovereign heads of state, backed by full US diplomatic and security guarantees. Both parties considered the US as a neutral entity. The Board of Peace instead has one person both as the mediator and the enforcer—President Donald Trump, who holds veto power over everything. The roles are considerably blurred and trust levels rather deficient.

The verification mechanism is another source of potential failure. Camp David legislated a multinational observer force with established protocols. The Board of Peace is putting its money on an untested international force that is yet to be formed.

But the greatest peril is posed by how the two sides view the ‘agreement’ (or maybe, diktat is a better description).

The Camp David had a rational state actor (Egypt) whose interests — recovering Sinai, ending costly wars — aligned with a negotiated exit, and Begin’s government, though hawkish, was not internally split on the deal’s core terms. The current formulation asks Hamas, a non-state militant organisation with an ideological commitment that militates against peace, to fully disarm and erase itself. It also demands that Israel, whose governing coalition is fractured between total military victory and a negotiated framework, fall in line and accept a reality that is the exact opposite of the goals it has pursued for the past few years. The plan seeks an immediate ceasefire and hostage release with Hamas’s staged disarmament, transitional Palestinian governance, and eventual Israeli withdrawal, multiple simultaneous sequences that are all open to bitter scepticism from all stakeholders.

Indeed, the evidence of opposition to the plan is already visible in plain sight.

The first set of cracks appeared among the coalition partners. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir dismissed the draft roadmap as “not acceptable” and asserted the only acceptable outcome is Hamas’s total annihilation. Religious Zionism minister Orit Strook labeled the agreement “dangerous”, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who has previously blasted earlier iterations of Trump’s Gaza plans as a “resounding diplomatic failure” and “complete insanity” — has continued to warn the approach could “end in tears.”

The opposition figures have been warmer, though not uncritical. Benny Gantz and former PM Naftali Bennett had earlier voiced broad support for Trump’s involvement; their views on the current settlement are not known.

The Israeli media have plunged into every nuance of the deal. Outlets like the Times of Israel have published the full negotiated text of the roadmap, while noting Netanyahu’s conspicuous silence as the central story. The Israeli press has also been at pains to point out the disconnect between Trump’s celebratory “historic breakthrough” framing and the more skeptical, hedged reactions from Israeli security officials and Hamas itself. Hamas, though, has welcomed the agreement and agreed to disarm, but only after a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. The Israelis didn’t get the same memo.

It takes a brave analyst to predict a future where Israel and Hamas are the two parties. But one point can be made with reasonable certainty: it will be most surprising if Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political survival, accepts this arrangement weeks before his fate is decided at the polls. Indeed, it is far more likely that he will reject the entire agreement, bringing into the open the widening gap between the Trump administration and the Israeli government.

If that happens, it would have far-reaching effects on the bilateral relationship, one that is already increasingly unpopular in the US, where another crucial election is due.

Think of a significant strategic decision your organisation took in the last two or three years—a market entry or an acquisition, or a major competitive response. Now ask yourself: did the company have intelligence — research, analysis, a competitive assessment — that was relevant to that decision? More importantly, was it fully used?

The answer in most organisations, is the same. The intelligence existed but was not fully utilised. Instead, pre-conceived decisions and gut feelings led the way.

This is not an analytical problem, and, indeed, has never been an analytical problem. It is a leadership problem — specifically, a failure in the relationship between the person who holds intelligence and the person who needs to act on it. I have spent a career studying this failure across military campaigns, geopolitical crises, and corporate boardrooms. The pattern does not change. Only the stakes do.

Two Autopsies

Arnhem, September 1944. Field Marshal Montgomery conceived Operation Market Garden — an audacious airborne assault to seize a series of bridges across the Netherlands and open a corridor into Germany. The plan was especially breathtaking because in German dossiers, he was considered a cautious and ‘habit-ridden’ man. But Montgomery was supremely confident; he had invested his personal prestige in the plan. He had effectively already decided.

Then the intelligence arrived.

Major Brian Urquhart, chief intelligence officer of the British I Airborne Corps, had commissioned aerial reconnaissance of the Arnhem drop zones and got photographs showing the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions — rested, re-equipped, at full strength — positioned precisely where the British 1st Airborne Division was due to land. This was not ambiguous intelligence but photographic evidence of two armoured divisions in the path of lightly equipped paratroopers.

Urquhart presented it to his superior, Lieutenant General Frederick Browning, who summarily dismissed the photographs. When Urquhart persisted, Browning placed him on medical leave for “nervous exhaustion.”

The operation proceeded as planned. Of the ten thousand men of the 1st Airborne Division who landed at Arnhem, fewer than two and a half thousand returned across the Rhine.

The intelligence was correct. The commander could not afford to hear it — because it threatened a plan he had already committed to publicly.

Kargil, May 1999. In the eleven months before Pakistani forces were discovered occupying positions on the Indian side of the Line of Control, India’s intelligence apparatus generated forty-five reports touching on suspicious military activity in the Kargil sector. The intrusion was not discovered from any of those reports. It was discovered by a shepherd named Tashi Namgyal, who walked into a military post and reported armed men on the ridgelines who did not look Indian.

Apparently, two pathologies were at work. The first: intelligence tribalism. Each agency operated in its own channel, protecting its sources, guarding its assessments. Nobody looked for an integrated picture, nor did anyone demand that the picture be integrated.

The second: mirror imaging. Pakistani intentions were assessed through the lens of Indian rationality. The adversary’s logic was filtered through the analyst’s own template of rational behaviour. It was systematically wrong. In the attacks that followed, the Indian Army’s professionalism and valour finally saved the day.

Both pathologies are alive and well in corporate intelligence today.

A structural footnote both cases shared. In neither Arnhem nor Kargil was the gap between intelligence and decision purely a matter of personal failure. Excellent intelligence existed but the organisation itself had been wired in ways that separated intelligence production from decision-making. The reporting lines excluded intelligence as a formal input. The mandate of the intelligence function did not correspond to what decision-makers actually needed.

This matters — because it means the solution is not always about better relationships or braver analysts. Sometimes the wiring itself needs to change.

Two Roles, One Gap

The gap between the intelligence room and the decision room almost always opens at the boundary between two roles: the CI professional and the senior decision-maker. Both roles have a part to play in closing it. Most of the time, neither plays it well — because neither has been told it is their responsibility.

The CI professional waits to be consulted, while the decision-maker assumes the intelligence function will flag what matters. Both are waiting for the other to cross the room. In reality, often nobody feels the need to cross.

The CI professional who decides to close the gap needs three disciplines.

Design around decisions, not mandates. Most CI functions operate under broad mandates: monitor the competitive landscape, track competitor activity, support strategic planning. These are job descriptions, not intelligence requirements. The military concept of Commander’s Critical Information Requirements cuts through this: before every significant decision, ask your most important stakeholder — what would you need to know that would change what you are about to do? That question, asked consistently, transforms the CI professional from a data provider into a decision partner.

Protect analytical truth. There is a type of intelligence professional I call the brief merchant — skilled, present, productive, and ultimately useless, because they tell the decision-maker what the decision-maker wants to hear. Building a reputation for analytical honesty — slowly, through repeated small acts of intellectual courage — is the most durable form of professional capital in this field. The framing can be professional rather than confrontational. Have we considered the scenario in which this assumption is wrong? The substance does not soften. The sharp edge remains. But it is delivered in a way designed to be received, not rejected.

Do completed staff work. The military concept is simple: do not bring your commander a problem. Bring a recommendation, with the analysis done, the options evaluated, and the decision clearly framed. The CI professional who arrives with here is what is happening, here is what it means, and here are three options for how we respond is a strategic advisor. The one who arrives with a deck of findings and leaves the decision-maker to work out the implications is, at best, a well-intentioned brief merchant.

The senior decision-maker has reciprocal obligations. They ask ‘what would change my mind?’ before committing, not after. Leaders who punish unwelcome intelligence train their CI functions to produce comfortable fictions within a few cycles, so they separate the messenger from the message. They reward the so-what — the finding that challenges rather than confirms. And they close the loop: after a decision and its outcome, they return to say what the intelligence got right, what it got wrong, and what they needed that they did not get. Without that feedback, every intelligence cycle begins from scratch. The same errors repeat. The same signals are missed.

What Good Looks Like

Two Indian organisations show the framework at work.

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce platform, ran its CI function the way most organisations do: quarterly reports, produced by analysts, sent upward, received politely, largely not used. Then Amazon Prime launched in India. Faced with competitive shock, Flipkart’s leadership changed not the quality of the analysis but the demand for it — launching real-time intelligence cycles embedded in high-stakes decision windows, with sales teams, vendor networks, and frontline managers all feeding in. The transformation worked. It was also triggered by a crisis. That is the cautionary note: the CI professional’s job is to build that rhythm before the shock arrives, not in response to it.

Tata Consultancy Services took a deliberate path. Competing aggressively for large public sector contracts globally and losing bids it should have been winning, TCS’s CI function identified the structural problem — intelligence fragmented across inboxes and unvisited drives, never integrated, never reaching the decisions it needed to reach. The response was architectural: a Competitive Win Room consolidating win/loss intelligence, analyst briefings, and RFP feedback into a single integrated picture, with consultation made mandatory before any major bid was priced. Then Market Monday — every team, every week, one insight from the field, shared across the group. Not a product. A signal: In this organisation, intelligence is everyone’s business. Win rates in government tenders improved fifteen percent. Bid preparation time fell twenty-two percent.

One organisation changed under pressure. The other changed by design. The deliberate structural intervention is the more durable solution.

The Distance Is a Choice

Sherman Kent — the man who built the analytical architecture of modern Western intelligence — wrote that the goal of intelligence is not to inform but to influence.

Most CI functions are designed to inform. The gap between that and influence is not fixed by the organisational chart, the reporting line, or the seniority of the CI team. It is a choice — made, or not made, by someone who decided the gap was their problem to close.

In every case examined here — Arnhem, Kargil, Flipkart, TCS — the variable that ultimately mattered was not the quality of the analysis. It was the presence or absence of a person who understood that intelligence without influence is just information.

That person could be you.

Maj Gen Neeraj Bali, SM (Retd)

spoke on this theme at the Institute for Competitive Intelligence Annual Conference, Frankfurt, June 2026. He is one of the three trainers for the Strategic Competitive Intelligence for Executives certification, being conducted online and offline by the Institute for Competitive Intelligence in September (23-25).

The renewed unity within Iran in the face of US attacks has been cited as one of the unintended consequences of the war. Far from triggering an uprising by the suppressed Iranian populace, the divisions within the country appeared to recede, leading to an unprecedented internal coalescing. But in the past few days, that façade has shown remarkable cracks. And the dangerous impact of that fracture—that most corrosive of military dynamics, tit-for-tat violence—is spreading all over the Middle East and beyond.

Initially, some analysts, like Eurasia Group’s Gregory Brew, downplayed the divide as “evidence of miscommunication, not serious divisions.” After all, spats between diplomats and the military are not unusual. But clearly, these are not mere intellectual differences of opinion, but consequential policy chasms with immediate operational impact.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a leading proponent of diplomatically resolving the US-Iran conflict, has faced attacks from IRGC-linked media such as Tasnim and Fars. In mid-April, when he declared the strait “completely” open, Tasnim criticized his statement as “a complete lack of tact in information dissemination.” Fars News was even more scathing; it said that Araghchi’s tweet had “plunged Iranian society into an atmosphere of confusion.”

The public airing of differences was unprecedented when Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, was at the helm. The reason, as per Iran expert Saeid Golkar, is “because the main arbitrator is gone, the fight between different factions has started.” Araghchi and President Pezeshkian, who are at the forefront of the diplomatic efforts, appear to be losing the narrative battle inside Iran. Their attempts to signal openness to de-escalation are immediately undercut by IRGC media. The hardliners are increasingly steering Iran toward a more combative stance. They favor keeping the strait as leverage against the US rather than accepting a ceasefire deal that would erode that bargaining chip.

The split is genuine and consequential. In the Institute for the Study of War’s assessment, the IRGC’s criticism of Araghchi is “reflective of broader divisions within the Iranian regime.” ISW has reported that internal disagreements are not a recent phenomenon and had disrupted ceasefire talks in Islamabad. The attacks are consistent with the IRGC strategy even as ceasefire talks were underway.

It is this divide that is at the heart of the spurt of Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait and the retaliation by the US. Since July 6, the Iranians have targeted ships that were seeking to transit through the Strait by hugging the Omani coast, in violation of Iran’s diktats. The US Central Command immediately launched a flurry of attacks, hitting over 170 Iranian military targets.

A threat by the new Iranian leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has significantly exacerbated matters. He has vowed revenge for the killing of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling it the “demand of our nation.” Even if President Trump were inclined to return to the path of negotiations, this threat could make it politically difficult for him to dial down the attacks. And the spiraling violence has inevitable consequences for the countries of the region who continue to endure Iranian retaliation.

This leads us to a series of questions.

What is the end goal of attacking Gulf states? Does Iran imagine these states will drive the US out to avoid drone or missile attacks — and if so, how does that serve Iran’s long-term security or increase Iran’s leverage over Hormuz?

Does it not drive the Gulf states closer to the US — the very power Iran is constraining? And by forcing the US’s hand into retaliation, isn’t the Iranian leadership risking exactly the domestic uprising it had suppressed?

Above all: can Iran sustain a long-term war it appears to be deliberately provoking?

It is hard to fathom whether there are excellent answers to any of the above questions. The Iranian leadership is not reading the room well. Neither populism nor ‘revenge’ can be the basis of sound long-term strategy.

By continuing to lash out, the Iranian leadership is showing that it is not entirely mindful of its long-term good. If the Strait continues to disrupt the economies of multiple countries, it will erode whatever international sympathy Iran still commands.

Iran is ignoring the consequences of its actions on the sympathy and support in the world. Ironically, it is mimicking its archenemy, Israel.

If this story does not change course, it is hard to see a good ending.

The 14-point Memorandum of Understanding between Washington and Tehran has been celebrated in a few quarters as a diplomatic triumph and condemned in many others as a capitulation. In their enthusiasm, both the critics and the supporters seem intent on overlooking the obvious that even the signatories have been at pains to point out: the MOU is not an ending, but at best a comma. It is a fragile start, shaky and fraught with multiple possibilities of failure. However, for us in India, the question that matters most is not whether the document survives its own contradictions, but what the region looks like on the morning after, regardless of whether it does.

With negotiators from the US and Iran, and the mediators, all gathered in the lakeside city of Lucerne to thrash out the finer details, that morning had already dawned. Is India awake to it with sufficient situational awareness?

A Region Reorganised, Not Resolved

Let us be precise about what has actually changed in the Middle East, and what has merely been papered over.

Iran has emerged from the conflict battered but unbowed. Its nuclear infrastructure has absorbed tremendous damage; its economy, already under the boot of years of sanctions, has worsened. But the regime has survived. Its narrative of resistance — of having taken on the combined military weight of the United States and Israel and not capitulated — is politically even more credible in the eyes of its citizens and in many parts of the world. Tehran has, paradoxically, converted military punishment into political capital. The hardship has been internalised not as regime failure, but as adversarial hostility. It is an old playbook, and it works every time, yet it is rediscovered with equal surprise each time it is deployed.

The MOU has only strengthened Iran’s hand. Fox News reporter Peter Doocy reminded the President that, in January 2020 following the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, Trump had remarked, “Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation.” The MOU tells us that President Trump was prescient—at least on the matter of negotiations.

Israel’s position is less triumphant and its media is openly acknowledging that. A poll of 3,644 respondents, conducted between June 17 and 20 by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and reported by the Times of Israel found that even among voters who support the right-wing bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 93.1% believed Iran had won. In the long-term prognosis, 82.9% of respondents believed the six-week campaign against Iran weakened Israel’s long-term security. 86% had a negative attitude toward the MOU, and 87.8% of Israelis said that the country failed to achieve the objectives it launched the offensive to achieve.

What were these goals? The declared objectives at the outset of the conflict — the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme, the destruction of its ballistic missile capability, the severing of its network of regional proxies — have not been achieved. The MOU itself, which Israeli media outlets have variously described as a “bad agreement,” a signal of “weakness,” and a “disaster,” does not require Iran to dismantle a single centrifuge. It does not address the missile programme. And it says nothing whatsoever about Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthi formations that have functioned as Tehran’s forward operating presence across the region. Netanyahu’s silence during the finalisation of the MOU was noted by his own press — and silence, in that particular political tradition, is rarely acquiescence. The widespread criticism of the MOU—and President Trump—in Israel, and the public pushback by J D Vance, is an unprecedented occurrence in the US-Israeli relationship. It may not yet be a full-blown fracture, but it looks like a precursor to the souring of relations.

The Gulf monarchies — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar — have been the most agile actors in this reorganisation. They watched the conflict with the practiced stillness of those who have learned, across generations of regional volatility, that the side that speaks first in a crisis often regrets it. They have drawn their own conclusions. Chief among these must be that Washington’s reliability as a guarantor of regional security is a variable, not a constant. The Abraham Accords, the security arrangements, and the arms sales are all now viewed through a new lens: arguably useful, but inarguably not sufficient. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are hedging, as they have always done, but the hedges are now slightly thicker on the eastern side.

And the United States? It has secured a ceasefire it needed more than it will publicly admit. The desperation to declare a victory — any victory — and redirect attention homeward was the most powerful needle-moving force at the negotiating table. Experienced negotiators will tell you that desperation is a liability. The Iranians know it, as do the Omanis (who also served as interlocutors and may be the beneficiaries of the Iranian proposal to tax movement through the Hormuz)—indeed, all the Gulf rulers know it. The only people who may not fully appreciate it are those in Washington who must focus on the domestic political imperative of declaring it a win.

What Is Actually At Stake For India

There is a version of this conversation that stays safely at the level of abstraction — “strategic autonomy,” “multi-alignment,” “civilisational ties with West Asia” — and never arrives at the specifics that make those abstractions meaningful or hollow. This is not that version.

India sources approximately 17-18 per cent of its crude oil from the broader West Asia region, with Iraq and Saudi Arabia among its largest suppliers. Iran, despite sanctions, has historically been a significant source of discounted crude that New Delhi has been reluctant to surrender entirely. The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict — even briefly, even partially — sent a tremor through Indian energy markets that was felt but not fully acknowledged in public discourse. The MOU’s provision that Iran “will use its best efforts” to ensure safe passage of commercial vessels — and only for 60 days, after which an unspecified dialogue with Oman will “define future administration” of the strait — is hardly a reassurance for ‘free’ movement of shipping. For a country that cannot afford an energy supply shock, the Hormuz question is not a footnote. It is a headline waiting to be written.

The Indian diaspora in the Gulf — approximately nine million strong, the largest single concentration of Indians anywhere outside the country — remits $40 billion annually. It is the bedrock of household economies in Kerala, parts of Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Punjab. Any serious deterioration of security in the Gulf — any escalation that disrupts employment, triggers evacuation operations, or destabilises host governments — is not merely a foreign policy problem. It is a domestic economic crisis wearing foreign clothes.

Then there is IMEC — the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor, announced with considerable fanfare at the G20 in New Delhi in 2023 and now sitting in an uncomfortable strategic limbo. The corridor was conceived as India’s answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative: a multi-modal trade route connecting India through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel to Europe. The operative word in that list is Israel. A post-conflict Israel that is diplomatically isolated, whose northern flank remains unsettled, and whose relationship with its Arab neighbours is complicated by the Gaza catastrophe and the Iran conflict, is not the IMEC anchor that New Delhi had envisioned. The corridor is certainly not dead, but it needs recalibration — and that requires engagement, not studied silence.

The Strategic Autonomy Trap

India’s foreign policy establishment has, over the decades, developed an almost theological attachment to the concept of strategic autonomy. It is invoked as a virtue in itself, independent of outcomes. The reflex is understandable, even justified: a country that for decades navigated Cold War pressures from two superpowers, that fought wars on two fronts, and that spent years as a sanctions-isolated power following its nuclear tests has earned its instinct for independence. The instinct is sound, but that instinct must not calcify into doctrine that promotes wait-and-seesilent inaction. After all, strategic autonomy cannot be the freedom to avoid choices, but to make them on your own terms.

The current moment in West Asia presents India with precisely the kind of choices that strategic autonomy was designed to enable. The regional power geometry is in flux. Old relationships are being repriced. New interlocutors are acquiring leverage. The window for positioning — for inserting India’s interests, relationships, and credibility into the emerging architecture — is open. Windows of this kind do not stay open indefinitely.

Consider the specifics. India’s relationship with Iran, managed with considerable care through the years of maximum pressure, now requires recalibration. Tehran is in reconstruction mode — economically, diplomatically, and psychologically. The MOU speaks of at least $300 billion in reconstruction and economic development. Whether that number is realistic or aspirational is beside the point. The direction is clear, and it opens commercial and strategic opportunities for countries that are present in the conversation. India’s traditional Chabahar leverage —the port that was conceived as India’s Iran-based gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia— must now be revisited in the context of a post-war Iran that is simultaneously more economically desperate and more politically emboldened than before.

India’s relationship with Israel is equally in need of an honest reassessment. The defence and technology partnership that has deepened significantly over the past decade is a genuine national asset. But the partnership has costs that have not always been counted. India’s ability to function as a credible voice in West Asia, to be seen as an honest broker, to speak to both sides of the region’s oldest and most intractable conflict — all of this is complicated by the perception, increasingly widespread in the Arab world and beyond, that New Delhi’s silence on Gaza and on the Iran conflict amounted to tacit endorsement. Silence that is meant to be read as neutrality is not always received that way.

And then there is the matter of the United States. Washington’s behaviour during the conflict — the unilateral conduct of operations, the exclusion of even its closest allies from key decisions, the baffling decision to deny Israel advance sight of the MOU — is a data point that every country with a security relationship with America is now processing. India, too, should process it carefully. The permanent lesson is not that America is an unreliable partner, but that Washington’s strategic calculations are, at their deepest level, domestic calculations. India’s interests will align with those calculations sometimes, and will not, other times. The degree to which India has built relationships, leverage, and options that do not depend entirely on American goodwill is the degree to which India retains the autonomy it claims.

What India Should Actually Do

Strategy without specificity is literature. So let us be specific.

On Iran: India should activate its Oman channel — one of the most underutilised diplomatic assets in New Delhi’s foreign policy toolkit — to signal to Tehran that India is a willing and capable partner in Iran’s economic reconstruction. This is not charity; it is commercial interest aligned with strategic positioning. Indian infrastructure firms, pharmaceutical companies, and energy majors have the capacity and the appetite. What they need is political backing and diplomatic groundwork. The Chabahar port agreement, which India has held onto through years of American sanctions pressure, deserves to be treated as the strategic investment it was always meant to be, not merely as a talking point at diplomatic forums.

On Israel: India must have the conversation it has been deferring. The defence partnership is worth preserving. But it must be accompanied by a more assertive Indian voice on the political questions — not a voice that mimics Western positions, but one that reflects Indian interests and values. India has credibility in the Arab world that Israel’s Western allies largely lack. Credibility is only an asset if it is utilised. An India that stays silent on everything for fear of upsetting someone may find it has nothing to show for its discretion..

On the Gulf monarchies: The I2U2 framework — India, Israel, UAE, United States — was conceived as a useful vehicle for economic and technology cooperation. It remains that. But India must ensure that its participation in I2U2 is not read as alignment with one side of the region’s new fault lines. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are, as noted, themselves in hedging mode. India’s relationships with the Gulf monarchies are among its most valuable foreign policy assets — economically, through diaspora and remittances, and strategically, through the leverage that comes from being indispensable. That indispensability must be actively maintained, not assumed.

On IMEC: The corridor needs a realistic reassessment, not cheerleading. If the Israeli leg of the route is compromised by post-conflict realities, what are the alternatives? India should be commissioning that analysis now, not after the next regional escalation makes the question urgent.

On the broader architecture: India should be present — visibly, credibly, usefully present — in the conversations that will shape the post-conflict regional order. This means diplomatic engagement at the highest levels, economic commitments that signal intent, and a willingness to articulate Indian interests clearly rather than waiting for the dust to settle and then asking for a place at a table that has already been set.

The Window

The MOU between Washington and Tehran is, as I noted at the outset, a comma. Its cracks are visible to anyone who reads it with care. Point Eight addresses Iran’s nuclear ambitions — that is, the question that ostensibly precipitated the entire conflict — only after seven other points have been dealt with, including the reopening of a strait that was open before the war began. The hard questions — enrichment levels, centrifuge inventories, the fate of the stockpile — are all deferred to a “final deal” whose timeline is unspecified and whose prospects are, at best, uncertain.

If the MOU holds and the final deal is reached, India needs to be positioned in the new architecture that follows. If the MOU collapses — if Netanyahu’s hand reaches for the wrench, if domestic politics in Washington reverse course, if Iran decides that compliance produces vulnerability — then India needs to be positioned for that scenario too. Strategy must be scenario-proof, not weather-dependent.

The morning after in the Middle East is not a moment for studied abstraction. It is a moment for clear-eyed, specific, and energetic engagement. The region is being repriced. India’s interests in it are substantial and concrete. The window is open.

New Delhi should walk through it.

The articles was first published in the July 2026 edition of Force as ‘Sieze the Moment’.

Countries often predict their adversaries’ actions and responses based on their own ‘templates of rationality’. The danger arises when your adversary operates by an entirely different logic — and you mistake their moves for irrationality rather than a rationality you have not yet grasped.

This phenomenon is starkly visible in asymmetric conflicts (The Art of Punching Up: Asymmetric Warfare Comes of Age. https://shorturl.at/z4hY4). But even where the contest is between nations that have near-parity, a side can stumble into making strategic errors by assuming that the opponents think like them. The situation is even more fraught with such possibilities where one country has invested in cultivated irrationality.

During the Second World War, Montgomery’s bold plan to drop three Allied airborne divisions to secure a series of bridges in German-occupied Netherlands was not expected because German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s assessment of Montgomery’s mental make-up was ‘overly cautious, habit-ridden and systematic’, and not a man for bold gambits. Operation Market Garden achieved the surprise that Rundstedt had deemed impossible — even if the bridge at Arnhem remained out of reach.

Iran’s response during the recent war—the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, attacks on assets of American military and neighbouring Gulf countries—is a stark example of the same: a US misreading of the Iranian ‘template of rationality’.

On July 6, Iranian missiles struck a Qatari gas-carrying tanker eight nautical miles off the coast of Oman. The same day, a Saudi oil-tanker was the recipient of similar attention. On July 7, a drone attacked an unspecified tanker near the Strait of Hormuz. Evidently, Iran has calculated that unless it attacks vessels that are refusing to follow its dictates of moving along the Iranian coast, Tehran will lose the leverage the Strait of Hormuz has given Iran.

The timing of these provocations is notable for what it ignored. All the attacks came as the leaders of NATO were due to assemble in Ankara. Back in Iran, the funeral of the slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was still underway. Yet, Iran asserted its domination, and either did not care for retaliation, or assumed that beyond tokenism, there would be none. What presumption was fueling this audacity?

Iran has not only negotiated aggressively, but it has also continued to show leverage in the weeks after the agreement was signed. Iran is sensitive to Western and Gulf efforts to weaken its ability to use the Strait of Hormuz as a source of leverage in future disputes. It has reacted violently to ships being encouraged to transit through the strait along the Omani coast or countries proposing alternative, non-Iranian-controlled transit mechanisms. It dismissed a UAE-sponsored proposal made to the International Maritime Organization to manage the strait. Above all, it has not backed away from using combative ‘diplomatic’ exchanges with the US.

How is the Iranian leadership reading the template of US’ rationality? We don’t know, but Iran’s consistent aggressive behaviour assumes that another full-fledged war will not break out because of several US compulsions. The looming mid-term elections are important to President Trump, and the war has not been exceedingly popular. High gas prices at the pump and inflation could tilt the fortunes against the Republican Party. There have been concerns about the depletion of critical munitions. The disquiet among the Middle East allies of the US, who have withstood Iranian counter attacks is another key factor. But this is conventional wisdom and foists Iran’s template of rationality onto that of the US. It may be a mistake. While all the reasons that constrain the US from continuing the war still apply, there is a point where the US may decide that not retaliating strongly would be politically unwise, and that calculus may override all the limiting factors.

Indeed, as I write this, during the NATO Summit, President Trump has declared that the truce was over. He has promised ‘hard’ retaliation and a resumption of the blockade of the Strait. That threat has already manifested in US Central Command’s July 7 strikes against over 80 targets in Iran, including coastal radar sites, anti-ship missile capabilities, drone launch sites, command-and-control networks, and over 60 IRGC small craft. The Trump administration has also revoked Iran’s oil waiver. The hastily cobbled-together agreement between Iran and the US appears to be rapidly fraying.

Iran cannot afford another war. Whether its leadership has correctly read the American template of rationality — or is about to discover it has not — may be the question on which the next few days turn.

I have been reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey. The book is everything that its reputation, built on the back of a Booker, promises: a literary achievement of awe-inspiring creativity, a celebration of imagination. Yet, I cannot help feeling a tinge of frustration over my ploddingly slow progress. True, over the years our reading styles—and speeds—change. But even after that allowance has been made, I realise that I am unable to read it even in small gulps as I might, say, a Philip Roth or an Ian McEwan or a Julian Barnes.

Could it be that I was drawn to the book by the widespread applause, but, truth be told, this is not my kind of book? That is entirely possible. But on deeper reflection, I am veering to the view that I need to distinguish between two different experiences that often get conflated.

One is admiration, and the other is absorption, and they are not the same.

The story, if we can call it that, shows us Earth, life, and human experience through the thoughts of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard a space station. We float with the space travelers in their metallic dwelling as it circles the Earth 16 times in a single day.

I admire Orbital. I am struck by the magic of Samantha Harvey’s language, structure, and perspective, and can see why it won the Booker Prize.

Could it be that I was drawn in by the widespread applause — but, truth be told, this just isn’t my kind of book? After all, absorption is a more intrinsic feeling that keeps pulling you back to the page even when nothing ‘important is happening’. That depends less on literary merit than on what I, the reader, am temperamentally inclined towards.

Take Philip Roth, whose books like The Human Stain kept me riveted. Roth’s stories are driven by conflict, personality, argument, embarrassment, desire, and guilt. There is almost always someone wanting something, resisting something, or talking themselves into or out of something. The engine is human psychology. One feels compelled to read another twenty pages because we want to know what this impossible person will do next.

Orbital lacks nothing in brilliance but has no engine that is relentlessly driving the narrative around unseen bends. It is built around perception rather than plot. The astronauts become lenses through which we see Earth, memory, time, weather, and fragility. The novel is not keen to ask ‘What happens next?’ but ‘Can you stay engaged, looking at the unfolding beauty?’

That’s a different demand — and a harder one to meet when your mind is already attuned to unfolding stories.

Or is there another possibility?

Sometimes a book asks us to use a different reading rhythm. We instinctively apply the wrong one. Reading Orbital in large chunks may actually flatten it. Reading ten or fifteen pages and then closing it might be closer to the experience Harvey intends. It resembles listening to a string quartet more than binge-watching a television series.

Maybe the real achievement of Orbital is not that it tells a story, but that it quietly insists you slow down enough to notice one is not being told. I am sure I am the right reader for it, but I must read it as the book that needs a different pace, even a fresh set of eyes. I am at the end of my reading, and like the spacecraft, have circled the book slowly, warily, and gratefully. The distance is worth it for the view from above; I have discovered.

The MOU between Iran and the US already appears at risk. Most observers (including me: see A Peace Built on Cracks) had pointed to several contradictions that had been papered over to expedite the reaching of an agreement. The no-war-no-peace situation was neither helping Iran access its frozen assets, rid itself of debilitating sanctions and move forward with reconstruction, nor was it letting President Trump declare victory and repair his party’s prospects for the looming mid-term elections. It was convenience more than thoughtful deliberation that drove the two to ink the MOU.

But even the sceptics had underestimated the source of conflict. It was a fairly common view that the unresolved nuclear question, Hormuz after the 60-day moratorium, the promise to provide Iran with substantial funds for recovery, and the ever-present possibility of Israel throwing a wrench into the works were all formidable challenges. But what had not been foreseen was how the loosely worded language of the MOU could itself become the first casualty — and the first provocation.

The trigger to attack the cargo ship Ever Lovely, owned by Evergreen Marine, a shipping company based in Taiwan, was a single sentence — and its interpretation:

“Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of

Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa.”

In Iran’s understanding, the words ‘make arrangements’ convey that it is Iran that would coordinate and execute the resumption of shipping. Based on these delightfully flexible words, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had warned that all ships wanting to transit through Hormuz must coordinate with Iran’s navy and that they should not take an alternative route, a barely concealed injunction against taking a route through Omani territorial waters. The IRGC’s instruction was explicit: “We warn all vessels to strictly refrain from any movement outside the designated routes.” It promised action against vessels that did not heed these diktats. Clearly, Iran wants to continue having a vice-like grip over all shipping. Or, goes Iran’s translation, how will it ‘make arrangements’ for the opening of the strait?

The US struck Iranian military surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defence sites, drone storage facilities, and minelayer capabilities. Almost simultaneously, an oil-tanker, the Panama-flagged Kiku, was attacked by a one-way drone. Iran followed it up with drone and ballistic missiles strikes against eight American targets located in the Fifth Fleet naval base in Bahrain and the Al Salam military base in Kuwait. Naturally, this provocation invited another retaliatory strike by the US.

As the bombs fell on Bahrain and Kuwait, Israel and Lebanon were finalising a ceasefire.

Are we back to the starting point? Could this tit-for-tat violence spiral out of control? Perhaps not.

The bottom line is this: the compelling reasons that drove both the US and Iran to the table have not disappeared. It would appear that Iran’s current actions are aimed at maintaining pressure on the US to secure the best possible deal. Having extracted concessions in the initial rounds of negotiations, Iran is settling the bilateral equation in its favour. That is the most hopeful assessment one can make at this point.

But history rarely follows the fondest hopes of the dramatis personae. More often than not, unseen fears and rationalisations take the driver’s seat. And conflicts gather a momentum that belongs to no one.

The 14-point MOU between the US and Iran is a remarkable document. It has clearly been put together by warring sides that were eager to end the conflict and put off the heavy lifting needed for a formal deal to another day. They drew up a memorandum of understanding that is strewn with cracks that make it so fragile that its survival must depend on extraordinary providence indistinguishable from miracles, and a great deal of unprecedented sagacity. The latter has so far not been in evidence in the conduct and intent of the dramatis personae. But let us hope for the best, because for the moment, hope is all we have while we wait for the unknowable.

The MOU opens with ‘respecting each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’, a matter that should need no formal commitment in the world we have spent decades constructing. Lebanon is mentioned as part of the ‘deal’, and that is precisely where questions remain. Has Israel got—and agreed to—the same memo?

Sample these from the Israeli media: The Jerusalem Post underscored that ‘Israel’s Security Cabinet officials are frustrated with the US-Iran MoU’. It also headlined this complaint: The US denied Israel’s request to view the Iran deal prior to the signing ceremony. Israel National News quoted a senior Israeli official who opined that this arrangement ‘signals weakness’. Yediot Ahronoth led with a front-page headline ‘Bad Agreement’. In Israeli commentary, ‘bad deal,’ ‘signals weakness,’ and ‘disaster’ are the recurring phrases, which told you the reaction is not mild skepticism but open alarm.

The main sticking point—Iran’s nuclear ambitions—does not get a mention until Point Number 8. In comparison, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is at the top of the list, an irony considering that the strait was open all along before the war. That is a strange spin on ‘conflict management’—first cause the conflict and then spend energy to manage it. The MOU confers another bit of generosity on Iran: Iran will use its best efforts to ensure safe passage of commercial vessels, free of charge — but only for 60 days. Does this offer a lucrative option on Day 61? The MOU seems to offer that possibility: Iran will conduct dialog with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future Administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz.

The MOU said Iran “reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons”. But isn’t that a restatement of existing declared policy, not a new concession? The actual hard questions — enrichment levels, centrifuge numbers, the fate of the stockpile — are all deferred to the final deal with the vague placeholder of “a satisfactory framework being agreed upon.” This is the hill on which the critics in both countries may be most willing to die.

There is a mention of agreement on the disposal of what President Trump calls the ‘nuclear dust’. Speaking to reporters, he mentioned, though, that the residual enriched uranium was not all that important, as it was perhaps less than half a million dollars’ worth. He also appeared to concede that Iran could keep its ballistic missiles. The Times of Israel quoted him thus: “If Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and they all have some,” why not Iran? The newspaper’s opinion bears repeating verbatim: “Destruction of Iran’s missile program had been an aim on the same footing as others for Israel when it launched a war against the Islamic Republic alongside the US on February 28. While the US for weeks waffled on its own aims for the war, it has insisted throughout that Iran was attempting to use its missile program as a shield to make it impossible for other countries to prevent it from building a nuclear weapon.”

The sixth point explicitly states that the United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Admittedly, it is not a promise for cash transfer, but the amount to be spent on a plan to rebuild parts of the country. Analysts have pointed out that after the second world war, under the Marshall Plan the money promised to rebuild Europe’s war-torn economies, modernize industries, and prevent the political rise of communism was 13 billion dollars, or, in today’s prices, 179 billion dollars. The comparison with the JCPOA is even more startling. No direct money was promised to Iran under the 2015 JCPOA. Instead, the agreement granted Iran access to an estimated $100 billion to $120 billion in its own foreign assets, which had been frozen in overseas banks because of international sanctions.

One can go on. But the burden of the argument here is not that peace in this troubled region is unwelcome. The argument here is that the MOU is riddled with clauses that appear tilted in Iran’s favour. That makes it fragile, and that is what will give ammunition to critics of all political hues and persuasions to attack it. Some of it is already on display. And when that happens, it cannot be said with any certainty that the US will not find reasons to renege on it.

Fox News reporter Peter Doocy reminded the President that, in January 2020 following the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, Trump had remarked, “Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation.”

The MOU tells us that President Trump was prescient—at least on the matter of negotiations.

What is being discussed between Washington and Tehran is not, strictly speaking, a deal. It is an MOU — a memorandum of understanding — a 60-day ceasefire framework that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and initiate, rather than conclude, negotiations on the hard questions. The distinction matters because the enthusiasm with which American officials have been speaking of it stands in conspicuous contrast to the measured, almost clinical language coming out of Tehran. Iran’s state news agency has been at pains to clarify that the current draft includes ‘no new commitments’ on nuclear weapons, with further negotiations pending. Washington says ‘compliance first.’ Tehran says ‘terms still being finalised.’ These are not strands of the same conversation.

The unresolved questions form a formidable list. Will Iran’s frozen billions be unfrozen — and when, and contingent on what? Remember, the ‘giving away’ of billions to Iran was the chief criticism of Obama by Trump before he trashed the JCPOA. The American position is unambiguous: relief only follows performance, not the signing of the MOU itself. Iran, naturally, sees this differently. Then there is Hormuz — the draft MOU envisions the strait being open with no tolls for the duration of the ceasefire period — but what happens on day 61, if the larger negotiations stall, as they have a distinguished record of doing? What if Oman sees advantage in joining hands with Iran to levy a charge? And the nuclear question, the one that ostensibly started all of this, remains, in the words of a senior Council on Foreign Relations fellow, a matter where ‘we have been here before only to discover the parties cannot bridge the remaining gaps.’

Iran needs this deal. Its economy has been under the boot of sanctions for years; the strait’s closure has cost it dearly, and its domestic politics are not without their own turbulence. But here is the argument that is not made often enough: the United States needs it more urgently. The desperation to declare a victory — any victory — and pivot to the fractures at home is perhaps the strongest needle-moving force in these negotiations. Desperation, as every experienced negotiator knows, is a liability at the table. The Iranians are aware of this and are in no particular hurry.

All of which brings us to the factor that very few analysts are weighing with the seriousness it deserves: Israel.

Israeli media outlets have reported growing ala

rm over an ‘imminent agreement,’ with Channel 12 describing the coming hours as critical and suggesting that the details emerging so far do not appear to favour Israel. Yedioth Ahronoth has flagged concerns that any framework may fall short of requiring the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme, limiting its missiles, or addressing Tehran’s network of regional proxies. The right-wing Israeli framing is not merely about the substance of a potential agreement — it is about the process: the sense of surprise, of being bypassed, of Washington moving ahead regardless. Maariv has gone so far as to argue that Israel may need to reassess its entire regional strategy and build new alliances in response to shifting geopolitical realities. That is the language of a country that feels it is being left out of a room where its fate is being decided.

Netanyahu’s silence has been conspicuous enough that even the Israeli press has remarked upon it. But silence is not acquiescence, and given that Netanyahu is about to face an election in four months that will determine his political life, silence may be a precursor to opposition. Israel has, in the past, demonstrated a remarkable talent for creating facts on the ground at precisely the moment diplomacy needs the ground to stay still. An airstrike, a provocation, an incident in Lebanon — any of these could tip a fragile MOU into irrelevance before the ink dries.

The question, then, is not whether the US and Iran can find language both can live with. They appear to be inching toward that, however haltingly. The question is whether Washington has the will — and the leverage — to hold Israel back long enough for that language to mean something. That is the real test. And it is one for which the current American administration has shown, at best, a mixed record.

A deal that survives Iran’s internal deliberations, American domestic politics, the unresolved nuclear question, the frozen assets standoff, and the Hormuz calculus — and still founders on Tel Aviv’s opposition — would be a remarkable, if entirely plausible, failure. The wrench is already in Netanyahu’s hand. Whether it gets thrown is the only question that matters now.

In September 2025, China’s President Xi Jinping was reportedly overheard chatting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about the possibility of living to 150. It was a hot-mic moment as the three leaders walked side by side to a viewing platform to watch China’s massive military parade in

Tiananmen Square.

The interest of the three in the topic of extended lives was not as remarkable as the composition of the group: two of the world’s leading powers and a small country with an economy perpetually teetering on the brink.

This moment was not merely symbolic. It was based on a deep-seated reality that has shown the world how North Korea has used its geopolitical cards with adroitness and has punched far above its weight.

But to understand why that grouping commands such attention, it is worth examining the other side of the ledger. There is another picture: the US President with the Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi. The South Korean leader Lee Jae Myung is not in the frame, but during this visit, threats to South Korea’s security from its neighbour-twin were high on the agenda. By extension, even here, the spotlight was on North Korea and its nuclear and missile capabilities

.

That Japan includes the security of South Korea in its regional calculus shows that relationships are never static. Such bonhomie between Japan and South Korea was unthinkable for much of the last century. In 1910, the Japanese had annexed Korea, and only when Japan suffered defeat in 1945, did Korea shrug off the yoke of colonialism. A great deal of bitterness survived, though; some of it comes through in contemporary Korean TV drama series and movies like Pachinko: its popular cinematic references to Japan reflect the harsh historical reality of the Japanese occupation of Korea and the struggles of the Zainichi — the ethnic Koreans living in Japan.

In 1948, communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea came into being, each firmly under the thumb of Soviet and American influence, respectively. After the Korean War (1950-53), the two halves agreed on an armistice, not a peace treaty, and even now the two Koreas remain technically at war and divided by the DMZ.

After the war, Washington and Seoul signed the Mutual Defense Treaty, which has allowed American troops to be stationed on the peninsula. A large contingent of 28,500 US military personnel is currently stationed in South Korea, and the alliance has survived as the cornerstone of deterrence against North Korea.

This situation gained fresh complexity when North Korea went full steam ahead with developing a nuclear device. It withdrew from the NPT in 2003 and by 2006 conducted a nuclear test, the first of a series since then. It also created delivery systems to support its nuclear arsenal. The rest of the world has watched the developments with worry and confusion; the North Korean nation, closed and opaque as ever, continues to shroud its true intent and capabilities in deliberate mystery regarding its intent and capabilities to others in the region.

North Korea is the Lead Actor

A mix of ‘asymmetry’ and ‘cultivated irrationality’ has propelled North Korea to the center of attention and anxiety for the countries of the region, and often even the US. On the surface, the phenomenon is hard to explained. But a look at North Korea’s equation with each of the bigger players reveals a fascinating geopolitical game.

Arguably, the country that has been closest to North Korea is China. North Korea’s economy would collapse if China were ever to withdraw its patronage. Of course, such a prospect is unthinkable. China supplies most of North Korea’s imports and also buys a large share of its exports; it accounts for about 95% of North Korea’s legitimate trade. China is the hub, and everything else is secondary. Russia’s role is rising, especially as political and military ties deepen, but it still does not displace China as North Korea’s main economic anchor.

Yet, China appears to have no leverage over North Korea against the development and possession of nuclear weapons. The matter deeply concerns China. One of the cardinal tenets of China’s strategy has been a stable neighbourhood. China cannot countenance trouble in its backyard not only because that could interfere with its economic growth but also raise the prospects of American intervention into China’s sphere of influence.

Successive US presidents have been focused on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. In his first term, Donald Trump threatened North Korea with unprecedented rhetoric, ‘fire and fury like the world has never seen’. At the UN General Assembly, he even mocked Kim Jong Un as ‘Little Rocket Man’ on a suicide mission. But when the bluster made no headway, he changed tack, and the dynamic abruptly inverted. Orchestrated via South Korean mediation, Trump pivoted to direct, high-stakes engagement, becoming the first sitting US president to meet a North Korean leader. But all that pomp and pageantry made no change in North Korea’s weapons programme.

Of such importance is this issue even now that it came up between Xi and Donald Trump during the recent visit by the US President. Evidently, while agreeing with the US anxiety over North Korea’s nuclear weapons, Xi admitted that in this matter China had limited sway over North Korea.

A part of the reason for China’s reluctance to take a tougher stand with its small neighbour is the vastly improved relationship between Pyongyang and Moscow. By contributing troops to the war against Ukraine, Kim has endeared himself to Putin. China cannot ignore the increasing proximity between the two countries and would prefer not to raise any issues that would drive North Korea away from China’s long-standing embrace.

How much China values its closeness to North Korea is reflected in Xi’s recent visit to Pyongyang — notable in itself, given that China’s President is reticent about traveling. Occasionally, he has even skipped prominent meetings, e.g., the G20 Summit held in South Africa in November 2025. In 2025, he visited only four countries — and barring Russia, where he was invited to attend the Victory Day parade, the other three (Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia) were all in the neighbourhood, each visit aimed at reinforcing regional stability.

Evidently, North Korea has played its weak hand remarkably well. For Kim Jong Un, rubbing shoulders with the leaders of the world’s two foremost powers is not just theater — it is a domestic currency of the highest denomination.

The lesson from this geopolitical ménage à trois is not that small nations can be permanently exempted from the consequences of their choices. History has a long memory and a longer arm. But it confirms something less comforting: in the short-to-medium run, a country that possesses nuclear weapons, courts strategic ambiguity, and will be useful to larger powers on their terms, can punch well above its weight — and extract concessions that conventional diplomacy would never yield. North Korea has mastered this art. Whether that mastery ultimately serves its people, or merely the longevity of the regime, is a question that Pyongyang — in its characteristic fashion — is in no hurry to answer.

And, in another region, Iran must be looking at North Korea’s ‘success’ and drawing lessons for its own nuclear ambitions.

That blindness has not gone out of fashion. Consider what has unfolded in the last three years alone. In Europe, a country of forty-four million people, with a GDP roughly the size of Portugal’s, has ground down the conventional military ambitions of the world’s second-largest nuclear power. Ukraine has destroyed over three thousand Russian tanks using a combination of NATO-supplied anti-tank missiles, commercial FPV drones that cost less than a mid-range smartphone, and the oldest weapon of all: the refusal to quit.

Elsewhere, Houthi militants from one of the poorest countries on earth have, with missiles and rudimentary drones, disrupted over a trillion dollars in annual Red Sea shipping traffic and forced global supply chains to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope.

None of this is novel. What is new is the scale, the speed, and the technological scaffolding that now makes it possible for the weak to impose costs that were, until recently, the exclusive preserve of the strong.

The philosophy of the unequal fight

Asymmetric warfare is a conflict in which the opposing parties differ so substantially in military power that the weaker side would be wise to abandon purely direct confrontation and instead target the gaps — in doctrine, in geography, in time, and increasingly, in technology. It is the art of changing the game when you cannot win the game by the stronger player’s rules.

The philosophical lineage of this thought-process is ancient. Sun Tzu counselled ‘be where your enemy is not.’ Mao built an entire doctrine of a protracted war on the premise that time is the weapon of the weak. Lawrence of Arabia — who understood guerrilla war with the intimacy of a practitioner — described counterinsurgency as ‘eating soup with a fork.’ The militant, as I have observed elsewhere from my own experience in counter-insurgency operations, is almost invisible: he wears no uniform, carries no distinctive insignia, lives among civilians, and is accountable to no law that constrains the use of force. He is not bound by the rules. That is not a disadvantage. It is his entire strategy.

At the heart of every asymmetric contest lies a fundamental asymmetry, not of weapons but of will. The stronger party enters the fight with superior means. The weaker party enters it with superior patience. And history — from Vietnam to Northern Ireland to Afghanistan — has shown with some consistency which of the two lasts longer.

Technology: the great equaliser

What has changed in the contemporary era is that technology has collapsed the barrier to gaining meaningful military lethality. Three shifts, in particular, have turbocharged the asymmetric playbook.

The drone revolution has been the most visible. An FPV drone assembled from off-the-shelf commercial components can now carry a shaped charge capable of defeating battle tanks worth millions of dollars. Ukraine has fielded these in the tens of thousands. Hamas used commercial quadcopters to find the gaps in Israel’s fence for the October 7 attack. The Houthis, backed by Iranian technical support, have held global shipping industry to ransom. The kill-chain — the sequence of steps from identifying a target to destroying it — has been compressed to minutes.

The second shift is in information warfare. The battlefield now extends to the smartphone screen. Zelensky’s decision to remain in Kyiv in the early hours of the Russian invasion — broadcast instantly and globally — was as strategically decisive as any armoured manoeuvre. The weaker party, historically outgunned on the ground, can now own the narrative. Perception, as any serious strategist knows, is not separate from reality.

The third shift is in the proliferation of precision munitions. Anti-tank guided missiles, man-portable air-defence systems, GPS-guided rockets — technologies that once resided exclusively in the arsenals of major powers — are now available at a rate that no arms control framework has kept pace with. The result is a world in which asymmetric capability is no longer a function of state wealth but of ingenuity, access, and will.

The strategic error of the powerful

If there is a single lesson that the United States — the finest conventional military machine in history — has failed to absorb across three decades of asymmetric engagement, it is this: your opponent is not obliged to fight the war by your template.

The Iran case is instructive and should induce genuine intellectual discomfort among Western strategists. The United States spent over two trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan in direct military expenditure. Iran, in the same period, spent a fraction of that sum — arming, training, financing, and directing a ring of proxy militias from Lebanon to Yemen — and emerged from the era of the Global War on Terror more regionally influential than it entered it. The US was expensively optimising for the wrong problem. It built carrier strike groups and stealth aircraft calibrated for peer competition. Iran’s investment in patience and plausible deniability returned higher strategic dividends.

In the recent conflict, Iran did not confront the US and Israel missile for missile – it could not have. Instead, it adopted strategies that its opponents had either not considered or discarded – the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, the bombing of other countries in the Middle East, and a sophisticated meme war aimed at a domestic US audience.

The Russia-Ukraine war offers the mirror image of the same lesson. Russia expected a 72-hour decapitation strike and swift capitulation. Ukraine, tutored by NATO advisers and armed with asymmetric tools ranging from Javelins to Starlink terminals, converted what was designed as a blitzkrieg into a two-year war of attrition that has bled Russian conventional military capacity to a degree that no Western defence analyst had publicly predicted. Ukraine chose, as its most potent weapon, the strategic relationship with the West to sustain asymmetric resistance long past anyone’s expectations.

The axiom that emerges from both cases is blunt: if you do not understand what game your opponent is playing, you will optimise magnificently for the wrong outcome.

The flashpoints ahead

The world’s next major conflicts are already taking shape in the grey zone of cyber operations, proxy warfare, economic coercion, and narrative manipulation that precedes, and often substitutes for, direct military confrontation.

Taiwan is perhaps the most consequential case. China holds overwhelming conventional superiority. Taiwan’s response has been to build a porcupine — mobile coastal missile batteries, armed drone swarms, hardened civilian infrastructure, and a society being prepared for protracted resistance. The lesson from Ukraine is instructive: if Taiwan can survive the first 72 hours of any assault and impose sufficient costs, the strategic mathematics change entirely. Beijing understands this, which is precisely why its most sustained investments in recent years have not been in amphibious landing craft alone but in information warfare, undersea cable disruption capability.

The India question

India faces its own asymmetric reckoning, and it is not a distant one. Pakistan has, for four decades, run the most successful asymmetric campaign in the subcontinent — bleeding India through proxy militancy at a cost, to Pakistan, that is a fraction of what it has imposed. China, in the grey zone, is advancing across domains — cyber intrusion, infrastructure investment as strategic leverage, salami-slicing along the LAC — that India’s conventional military architecture is not structured to contest.

Three changes are needed, and they are needed within this decade.

The structural imperative is the creation of a dedicated asymmetric warfare command — tri-service, integrated across cyber, drone operations, special forces, and information warfare — that is not an afterthought to conventional planning but a primary instrument of national strategy. Both Pakistan and China have already made this institutional investment.

The strategic imperative is the operationalisation of the grey zone as a deliberate doctrine. India must develop a credible offensive cyber capability, the ability to sustain and influence non-state actors where national interest demands it, and an information warfare infrastructure that does not depend on government press releases for its credibility. Strategic ambiguity must become a policy, not an accident.

But the hardest change — and in my experience, always the hardest — is the mindset shift in the officer corps. The Indian Army’s magnificent culture, built on orderliness, process, hierarchy, and institutional discipline, is precisely what makes it formidable in conventional war. Those same virtues can become liabilities when the adversary has no interest in conventional war. Asymmetric conflict rewards audacity, improvisation, and a comfort with ambiguity that no drill manual fully teaches. We need officers who can think like insurgents even while commanding battalions.

The final reckoning

In the end, we again return to Goliath. He was not defeated by a sling. He was defeated by a strategic imagination he could not conceive of, wielded by an opponent who had long ago accepted that the only way to win was to refuse to play the game on Goliath’s terms.

The armies, alliances, and nations that will shape the decades ahead are not necessarily those with the largest defence budgets or the most sophisticated platforms. They are those with the greatest strategic imagination — and the institutional courage to act on it before the crisis, not during it.

The question for India is not whether asymmetric warfare is coming. It is already here, on both our flanks, advancing daily in domains we have not yet fully learned to contest. The question is whether we are ready to fight it on our terms — or whether we will be found, like so many powerful entities before us, still preparing, with great precision and considerable expense, for the last war.

(This article was first published in Life of Soldiers: https://www.lifeofsoldiers.com/2026/06/01/the-art-of-punching-up-asymmetric-warfare-comes-of-age/)

Hegseth is never lacking in confidence or articulation. Nor does he shrink from criticizing others or being combative. We saw that last year in February in his efforts to school NATO Defence Ministers in Brussels. He does not walk on eggshells.

But forceful speech cannot substitute clarity. If contradictions are stark, they have a way of rearing their heads above the noise of words.

Hegseth told his Shangri-La audience that bilateral US-China relations are “better than they have been in many years.” He spoke warmly of the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing as “historic.” He noted, with evident satisfaction, the increase in military-to-military exchanges. And yet, in the same breath, he sounded “rightful alarm” over China’s “historic military buildup” and its expanding regional footprint.

Has last year’s characterization of China being a real and imminent threat somehow become less imminent? Or is it merely diplomatic-speak, a language recalibrated to suit the bilateral temperature of the moment? Which is it? A threat that is “real and imminent” does not dissipate simply because a summit has been held and pleasantries exchanged. Unless, of course, the original characterisation was itself an exercise in gallery-play.

Then there is Taiwan — or rather, the studied absence of it. Hegseth did not utter the word in his prepared remarks. Not once. This, from a man who has rarely chosen silence when the subject is important, even if it is controversial. When pressed during the Q&A about the stalled arms sale to Taipei — a package worth approximately $14 billion that has been in limbo — he offered little beyond a breezy assurance that “we feel very good about our stockpiles,” before deferring entirely to the President. “Those decisions will depend on the president and the nature of that relationship. There’s been no change in our status.” The formulation was striking in its emptiness. The “status” he referred to — presumably the One China policy and the Taiwan Relations Act — has historically been the floor of American commitment to Taiwan, not a ceiling. To invoke “no change in status” as reassurance, while conspicuously avoiding any direct engagement with the arms sale, is to do a great deal of work with very few words. Taiwan’s security establishment, one suspects, was not reassured.

He simultaneously reaffirmed the strategy of “deterrence by denial” along the first island chain — that arc stretching from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines — and cited the proposed $1.5 trillion defence budget as evidence of enduring American resolve. The contradiction barely needs pointing out: you cannot anchor a deterrence strategy on Taiwan’s position within the first island chain while studiously avoiding any public commitment to arm it. Deterrence without credibility is a threat on paper.

But the moment that best illuminated the fractures in the American position was not scripted. It arrived, as such moments often do, from an unexpected direction. General Xavier Brunson, Commander of US Forces Korea, had given a podcast interview just days before the Dialogue in which he described South Korea as a “dagger in the heart of Asia” — pointing, unmistakably, at China. This was not an isolated lapse. A year earlier, at a symposium in Hawaii, he had described South Korea as a “fixed aircraft carrier” positioned inside China’s anti-access bubble, with the “potential to impose cost” on China, North Korea, and Russia simultaneously.

The historical resonance of the “dagger” formulation was not lost on those present. In the nineteenth century, the Prussian military adviser Major Jakob Meckel had described Korea as a “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” If Brunson’s inversion of the metaphor — redirecting the dagger toward China — was historically deliberate, that hardly exemplified a unified policy.

A Chinese delegate raised the remark directly during the Q&A, asking whether Brunson’s characterisation represented the official position of the Trump administration. What followed was instructive. Rather than answer directly, Hegseth passed the question to Brunson himself, who was present in the room. Brunson offered an explanation that clarified nothing and satisfied almost no one: “Context will always be king.” It is the sort of formulation that sounds weighty until you examine it. Context for whom? The operational intent Brunson had described — positioning US forces as a tool of China containment — did not become less provocative because it was delivered on a podcast rather than in a formal policy document.

Hegseth offered no clarification, and the matter was left unresolved. He paid half a compliment to the general and moved on.

What emerged from the exchange was something more consequential than an embarrassing moment: a visible gap between the diplomatic softening in Hegseth’s prepared remarks and the harder operational language being deployed by field commanders. The Defence Secretary was speaking in the idiom of managed competition and open channels; his general was speaking in the idiom of forward positioning and cost imposition. These are not easily reconciled postures. And Seoul, watching closely, had reason to be uncomfortable — it has not endorsed the framing of its territory as an instrument of China containment.

Japan’s Defence Minister, Shinjirō Koizumi, asked Hegseth for a direct message of reassurance about American commitment to the region. Hegseth obliged with the reliable formulae: the US is a “Pacific power” that is “here to stay,” committed to a “truly stable equilibrium” and a “favourable, enduring balance of power.” The phrases were correct and familiar. But reassurance derives its force from specificity, and Hegseth’s reassurances were notably general. When the architecture of deterrence along the first island chain is premised on Taiwan’s strategic position, and the Defence Secretary will not discuss Taiwan’s arms or articulate any commitment that goes beyond “no change in status,” the reassurance sounds like something being said for the record rather than something being said to be believed.

The overall impression was of a policy not yet at ease with itself — oscillating between the imperatives of diplomatic management and the logic of strategic competition, without having fully resolved the tension between them. Hegseth is, as noted, neither timid nor inarticulate. But clarity of delivery is not the same as clarity of direction.

The contradictions in Singapore were not the contradictions of a man who misspoke. They were the contradictions of a policy still in the making — assembled in real time, tested against circumstance, and not yet ready to answer the harder questions that allies and adversaries alike will inevitably ask.

That was the striking question Chinese President Xi Jinping posed to Donald Trump during a recent meeting. It sounded academic. It wasn’t.

Because behind that phrase lies one of history’s most dangerous patterns: when a rising power challenges an established one, fear can drive both toward conflict.

One phrase, two interpretations, one consequence

The idea comes from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides — pronounced “thoo-SID-ih-deez.” Writing about the war between Athens and Sparta over 2,000 years ago, he observed:

“It was the rise of Athens and the fear this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

Today, many strategists see echoes of that rivalry in the relationship between China and the United States.

China is rising economically, technologically, and militarily. The US remains the dominant global power. And history suggests that such transitions are often turbulent.

But Xi’s reference carried a deeper message. He was effectively saying: China’s rise is inevitable — but war does not have to be.

Not everyone in America sees it that way.

Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s influential former advisers, repeatedly invoked this same idea during Trump’s first presidency. But unlike Xi, Bannon treated conflict as almost unavoidable. In his view, economic rivalry with China would eventually become military confrontation — especially over Taiwan or the South China Sea.

So interestingly, both Xi and Bannon were reading the same historical lesson very differently.

Xi’s message was: avoid the trap.

Bannon’s message was: prepare for the trap.

One phrase, two interpretations, one consequence

And that brings us to Taiwan — perhaps the most dangerous flashpoint in the world today.

The United States officially does not recognise Taiwan as a separate country. Yet under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, Washington continues to arm Taiwan and maintain the capability to resist Chinese coercion.

Now, a massive new US weapons package for Taiwan reportedly awaits approval.

For Beijing, Taiwan is a non-negotiable red line.

Which means the real question is no longer academic.

Will Washington continue escalating military support?

Will China see that as containment?

And can both sides manage rivalry without sliding into confrontation?

Because history does not trap nations automatically.

Fear, miscalculation, and nationalism do.

And that is the warning Thucydides still offers the modern world.

One of the relatively underplayed moments of the US President’s China visit occurred at the start of the bilateral meeting between Chairman Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.

“Can China and the United States transcend the so‑called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new paradigm for major‑power relations?”, Xi asked the visitor.

The wording was remarkable for its directness. By invoking an ancient idea from the Greek philosopher Thucydides (pronounced ‘thoo-SID-ih-deez’), Xi had boldly addressed the elephant in the room: the friction and anxiety caused by China’s rise. The Chinese rarely—if ever—say something in a formal diplomatic setting without a reason. The call to avoid the Thucydides Trap was not casual storytelling. It carried an entreaty, an instruction, and a stark warning, all wrapped in ‘inoffensive’ phraseology.

In its original context, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote about the war between Athens and Sparta, famously says, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The rise of a weaker Athens had so threatened the reigning power, Sparta, that fear, more than any other dynamic, kindled a bloody conflict.

In the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), Sparta, the established dominant land power, fought with Athens, the rising cultural, naval, and commercial power. Sparta had decisively won that contest.

In Western strategic literature, this war is often discussed to imply that China is the modern-day Athens and the United States Sparta. Surely, Xi could not have signalled an outcome where China would lose!

In Destined for War, political scientist, and former US bureaucrat Graham Allison used the Thucydides example to argue that structural rivalry often pushes states toward conflict—even when neither side wants war. It was not a prophecy of who would win such a war, not even a claim that wars in such cases were inevitable. It was a warning about how fear and misplaced nationalism can create a misreading of intent, pushing rivals into an escalation spiral.

Over the years, this obscure phrase has had other US sponsors. Without ever using the word ‘Thucydides’, the celebrated US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger regularly invoked its spirit. In On War, he explicitly cited the Peloponnesian War to caution, “The challenge is to avoid the catastrophic collision that has occurred when a rising power confronted an established one.” On other occasions, he was even more direct: The United States and China must avoid sliding into confrontation as rising and established powers have done throughout history.

In the last decade, some US commentators have been less benign in their expression. Steve Bannon, the powerful Trump ally who co-authored ‘The Strategic Plan’ or ‘The 2017 Transition Agenda’ meant to guide Trump in the first 100 days of his first term, repeatedly invoked the Thucydides Trap during the first Trump era. His interpretation was laid out in harsh, civilization terms, stark and deterministic. Bannon was not interpreting, but prophesying. As per his vision, the trajectory would be: China’s rise would threaten America’s dominance, and while the initial rivalry would be economic, it would eventually become a military confrontation. He pointed to the South China Sea and Taiwan as flashpoints. His prescription? Take action now, because delay would only strengthen China further.

Bannon and Xi were clearly reading the same book differently. Bannon’s takeaway has been that war is inevitable and, therefore, the US must prepare for it. The US ideologue was creating precisely the fearful atmosphere that Thucydides had cautioned against. Xi’s statement implied that a hegemonic US must overcome its anxieties towards China. Unstated by Xi was the assertion that failing to surmount that anxiety could lead to war. Unlike in the Peloponnesian War, Xi could hardly have meant that Athens would lose. It was a trap that the two must circumvent.

It is hard to overlook that Xi Jinping was not only flagging a major concern; he was signaling the Chinese awareness of the latent insecurity China’s rise was causing. But the rise was inevitable, and war need not be.

The statement preceded a mention of Taiwan as a non-negotiable red line that China would never ignore. Xi’s warning could not be timelier. A proposal to sell weapons worth 14 billion to Taiwan is sitting on Trump’s desk for approval. Even though the US does not recognize Taiwan as a separate country, the statue called the Taiwan Relations Act, 1979, enjoins the US government to provide Taiwan with “arms of a defensive character,” maintain the capacity to resist coercion against Taiwan, and treat threats to Taiwan as matters of “grave concern.” This is the legal foundation for all US arms sales to Taiwan since 1979.

Both Bannon and Xi would agree that Taiwan has become a test of the Thucydides phenomenon. This is the trigger that could spring the trap. Which brings us to the big developments we could watch in the months to come:

Will Donald Trump ignore the Chinese warning and go ahead with the arms sale before or even after Xi’s planned visit to the US?

Or, will he use discretion as the better part of valour and keep the sale pending? In this eventuality, how will the MAGA proponents like Bannon react?

By admitting the specter of rivalry into the foreground, Xi has set the table. It will be interesting to watch how the next hand is played.

There is a recurring pattern in modern conflicts. The opening phase is precise, planned, and often executed with impressive efficiency. The closing phase is improvised, uncertain, and politically incoherent. It is not always because the aggressor failed to plan for resources; often it is because the nature of the beast was ignored: there will be unforeseen developments and contingencies. Not all emerging situations can be foreseen in advance. But a great deal of control over the script can be ensured by honestly envisioning the future.

But if the plans are based on sheer violence, hopes, and convenient logic, failure may be written in the stars.

This is not accidental. Military systems are optimised for what they can control. The initial phase of conflict targets, logistics, force deployment—falls within that domain. The endgame can be far away in the realm of relative fuzziness. It depends on political behaviour, societal reactions, factional dynamics, and external actors. These are variables that resist precise modeling.

As a result, intellectual effort gravitates toward the controllable. The early stages of war receive rigorous planning; the aftermath receives assumptions.

There is also a cognitive dimension. Decision-makers who have a bias for ‘action’ relegate uncertainty in favour of action. The tough questions—who governs next, what will success look like, what the adversary will accept—are deferred, not because they are unimportant, but because answering them with rigour may undermine the case for action itself.

Military history is replete with examples where evidence and forethought were subordinated to immediate action. Read the planning for the Second World War Operation Market Garden (the 82^nd Airborne Division, which is much in the news, was one formation in that operation too) and how Montgomery overlooked known facts that might have delayed or stymied his plans.

The most uncomfortable question in any war is the simplest: what does the end look like? If the aim is regime change, who replaces the regime? If the objective is behavioural change, what incentives produce it? These are not technical questions. They are political commitments.

When they are not answered before the first strike, they are answered after it—usually under less favourable conditions.

Take the case of the heartache over the Strait of Hormuz. As I have pointed out in a more detailed post, arguably, the most damning indictment of the US strategy is how it ignored the criticality of the Strait of Hormuz when several National and Defense Security Strategy documents had flagged the control of this waterway as central to US interests.

A reading of these documents from 2012 to 2026 illustrates an acute awareness of the criticality of the waterway. In the early 2010s, the language was clinical and assured. The strait was a checkbox for global stability. For example, the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance: “...maintain our ability to project power in areas where our access and freedom of action are challenged... including the Strait of Hormuz.”

2017 National Security Strategy: “We will maintain a forward military presence capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating... threats to the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.”

2022 National Security Strategy: “The United States will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab.”

By 2025, the tone shifted from deterrence to an admission that the situation was slipping. Despite the bold Peace Through Strength branding, the documents began to describe the Strait as a hostage situation rather than a secure waterway.

2025 National Security Strategy: “We will secure the Strait of Hormuz through a ‘Peace Through Strength’ naval buildup, ensuring American energy dominance is not held hostage by rogue regimes.”

2026 National Defense Strategy: “Current operations in the Strait of Hormuz reflect a ‘Closed Access’ reality; the US will maintain the Hormuz Security Corridor through sustained kinetic engagement.”

The US policymakers did not lack foresight; the US faltered in climbing out of documents to the reality of prevention. It is now fighting a war to reclaim a corridor that its own documents claimed was “non-negotiable” for a generation.

It is rumoured that securing the Strait was not considered important because it was estimated that the weight of aerial attacks would bring Iran to its knees so quickly that the closure of Hormuz would not be a factor. The basic tenet of asymmetrical warfare—beware the weaker entity will do things differently—was ignored. It was hoped that the people would rise against the regime, thus contributing to the unstated endgame.

It bears repeating: hope is not a strategy.

And it takes rigorous intellectual and professional intensity to ensure that wars do not begin with clarity, only to end in ambiguity

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There is a conceptual confusion at the heart of the coercive strategy the US has adopted against Iran: it conflated its coercion with ‘compelling’ Iran to fall in line. The aggressor may feel that these are similar constructs, but the weaker opponent who is being pummeled does not feel the same about it. Since it takes two to tango, how it is playing out is hardly as per the fondest hopes of the US and Israel,

Coercion is, of course, about punishment. It raises the cost of continuing current behaviour. But if the goal is to compel the adversary to change, even acquiesce, what is needed is not just pain, but a credible pathway out of that pain. The target must believe that compliance leads to relief, and that the relief will endure.

The strategy of maximum pressure on Iran, with relentless destruction and assassinations, mastered coercion and neglected the logic of ‘compelling’ Iran. The economic damage has been real and severe. But the critical question from the Iranian decision-maker’s perspective remained unanswered: if we comply, what exactly do we gain, and can we trust you to deliver it? Don’t forget that twice in the past year, Iran joined negotiations and was bombed while these were going on. The statement by the Omani interlocutors negates the US assertion of Iran’s ‘lack of sincerity’ in the discussions.

Iran’s unstated question—if we comply, then what?—was not theoretical. Iran had already complied once in 2015. It had already accepted constraints, opened its facilities, and received sanctions relief—only to see that relief reversed unilaterally. From Tehran’s vantage point, compliance did not produce stability; it produced vulnerability. The lesson learned was not moderation, but caution.

There is a second error embedded in the strategy: the assumption that economic pain translates into political capitulation. This assumes a transmission mechanism that rarely exists in authoritarian systems. External pressure is often internalised as external aggression. It strengthens, rather than weakens, the regime’s narrative. The hardship is not the regime’s failure; it is the adversary’s hostility.

This pattern is not new. It has been repeated across multiple geographies with remarkable consistency. Yet it continues to be rediscovered with equal confidence each time. At some point, repetition ceases to be experimentation and resembles something else entirely: a propensity to never learn lessons from one’s own history.

The second strategic lesson points to avoiding wholesale coercion as the winning approach, instead of giving the enemy a ramp to use. For a country that fought in Vietnam and Afghanistan, that should have been an obvious lesson.

First Strategic Lesson: The Perils of Substituting Electoral Politics for Long-term Thinking

In 2018, five months into his first presidency, Donald Trump tore up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal. This agreement was arrived at in 2015 after painstaking discussions between Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia, Germany) and the EU. It aimed to limit Iran’s nuclear program by capping uranium enrichment at 3.67% and restricting centrifuge numbers, with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verification.

Once the US walked away from the treaty, Iran began exceeding the deal’s limits on uranium enrichment and restricting inspector access.

Trump had called the deal an “embarrassment” and cited Israeli intelligence reporting about Iran’s insincerity to follow its stipulations. Israeli intelligence, and not the US! This is the actual start-point of the tension that led to the conflict, something that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu admitted having waited for over four decades.

To understand the underlying ‘strategy’, we need to peel off the layers of public posturing and examine this question: why was the existing nuclear treaty with Iran, the JCPOA, trashed, setting into motion the events that are now imperiling the global economy and have unleashed widespread violence?

In democracies, there is a persistent illusion in public discourse that ideology and larger considerations of ‘national interest’ drive strategy; the truth may lie elsewhere. Often, leaders of democratic dispensations make strategic decisions to play to their base for purely electoral considerations. Especially when political power changes hands, there is a tendency to rubbish the decisions of predecessors, even leading to major strategic reversals. ‘National interest’ is a comforting but incorrect interpretation of why previous arrangements are dismantled and treaties are rubbished. The deeper driver is structural and psychological.

When a new leader enters office, particularly in a sharply adversarial political system like the US, public opinion may not reward continuity. To preserve an agreement—like the JCPOA—negotiated by a predecessor is implicitly to validate their judgment. For a leader whose political identity is built on trenchantly opposing the predecessor’s ideas, that is not merely undesirable—it is incompatible with the very basis of their legitimacy. The decision to walk away from the Iran nuclear arrangement was not just policy; it was identity maintenance. It does not matter that the identity was constructed only to sway voters by evoking emotive issues.

There is also the inconvenient matter of time horizons. Agreements like the JCPOA are long-duration instruments. Their benefits are slow, distributed, and politically invisible. What is visible on the surface is an adjustment with the adversary, often painted as unseemly acquiescence. Tearing up such an agreement is aimed at producing instant political returns—a perception of strength and even machismo. The consequences show up later. Democratic systems, for all their strengths, are structurally poor at rewarding deferred gains.

But the most underappreciated factor is ownership; human beings protect what they create. Agreements (JCPOA, Paris Climate Change, Affordable Care Act et al.) carry emotional and psychological investment only for their authors. For successors, these are not achievements and thus touted as inherited liabilities. The Iran deal belonged to its architects. It had no emotional constituency in the administration that withdrew from it.

The predictable tragedy is that this cycle is not accidental. It may be baked into the structure of political succession in democracies, particularly when the successor rides in on a wave of populism. Durable agreements require institutional anchoring that transcends individual leaders. Without that, they remain temporary arrangements waiting for the next election cycle to undo them.

(There is, of course, the angle of Israeli influence on the decisions the US took. More about that in a later post.)

A downward slide of your organization – particularly if you are at the vantage point of CEO/CXO – does not come suddenly or with a megaphone announcement.

And by the time a leader realizes that growth has stalled and all the strategic thinking and aspiration are merely tap-dancing in one place, frustration can mount.

What are the ‘battle indicators’ that your organization is in a silent drift?

Having coached leaders and advised companies, this is my take.

The first sign is visible when the decision-making smells of forced caution. Updates dominate meetings, and the central sentiment moves from ‘let us do it’ to ‘let us wait till we have more data’. Participants appear more keen on benchmarks from the past, rather than grappling with imagination for the present realities. There is a constant search for ‘consensus’ rather than moving forward with courage. There is less dissent and more eagerness to pend difficult matters.

Leaders might justify this to their inner selves as ‘we are being careful’. But it may be drift dressed up as caution.

The second sign shows the way information flows through your organization. Typically, the bad news arrives late or is artificially softened to protect the sensibilities of senior leaders. Managers are keener to align with the views of their leaders than to align with reality. You are fed more narrative than data. To leaders, it may appear like ‘the team is aligned’. They rarely ask – aligned to what?

Next come minor cultural signals. A leader might notice that small process violations are going unchallenged, when a deadline slips the usual explanation is “just this once”, good performers are shielded even for egregious behavioral issues and mediocrity is tolerated to avoid rocking the boat (“If I push him, he will leave, and I will be held responsible.”).

As a leader you may look at all this and feel that it wasn’t worth escalating. But, unknowingly, you are becoming a party to the lowering of standards.

But as a CEO, CXO, or senior manager, it is worth asking what part you may play—personally—in allowing these patterns to persist: spending all your time in meetings, none in reflection; failing to have structured (and let me repeat ‘structured’) feedback from your rank and file, if you are now irritated at being questioned and notice a subtle defensiveness when your assumptions are challenged. What you might tell yourself is, “I am under pressure.” (My question: but then who isn’t?). You want to know what is really playing out? Your cognitive bandwidth and sense of reality are shrinking.

Finally, there are strategic signals that scream ‘we are in a drift!’.

Has your strategic review become a ritual, rather than a space for exciting outlier thinking? Are your assumptions no longer being revisited? Is the external environment and stakeholders discussed, but not integrated? Are the laundry-list of risks informally updated, but not internalized? If the answers to any of these questions are ‘yes’, then leaders are only monitoring the situation, not thinking well enough to influence it for growth.”

Just as life rewards action, drift penalizes the apathetic. There are consequences to bear.

First come the invisible signs of slower decision cycles, a growing gap between leadership perception and ground reality, and increased comfort with ambiguity without clarity. Safety first becomes the mantra. And that never won a war!

The real damage begins when people stop speaking up because trust erosion has set in, activity is treated as an end in itself and execution slips into a runner-up slot, performance trumps outcomes.

The leaders might feel: well, nothing is visibly broken and there is still no crisis.

Till there is.

Unexpected failures occasionally rear their head, and the response is an overreaction to what seems like a fresh problem (it isn’t. It was in the works since you drifted) and even the credibility of leadership is being questioned in muted tones.

Hey, what suddenly happened is what a leader might ask? Why has our collective confidence become brittle?

Of course, the question now is: what should you do?

The first thing that you must not plunge for is ‘better dashboards’! That has become a medicine for all ills. It is a cure for one problem, but here, we are discussing solutions for a larger malaise: a potentially debilitating drift.

As leader, it is time to sharpen exposure to weak signals, structured feedback and dissent deliberately, and to create slower thinking spaces inside fast organisations. Let making sense, not speed, be your theme song.

Re-focus on how truth travels upward, whether inconvenient honesty is being rewarded or discouraged, and how narrative is separated from data.

Your solution here should aim at modifying leadership behaviour at every level to shape what leaders must stop tolerating and how they personally navigate pressure.

And how about your own reorientation?

As an executive coach, I implore you to understand that time for reflection is a leadership obligation, that authentic curiosity is a cultivated discipline.

I would suggest that you devise your own checklists and processes to observe for signs, to create space for reflecting on how to bring about change, to craft vows and resolutions for setting a personal example and to making reviews a genuine exercise for tangible answers and change.

Leaders have many mountains to climb. This one may be the most worthwhile of all.

(Maj Gen Neeraj Bali, SM (Retd) is an army veteran, a corporate professional, and an executive coach. He is the author of The Winning Culture: Lessons from the Indian Army to Transform Your Business.)

Since the Galwan clash of 2020, India’s northern borders have witnessed an unprecedented acceleration in military infrastructure. The operationalisation of the Nyoma Airbase, capable of handling heavy transport aircraft just 35 km from the LAC, is emblematic of this shift. The Sela Tunnel, the DS–DBO Road, and the Border Roads Organisation’s record construction pace (12000 km in 2023-24) further reflect a system preparing for sustained high-altitude contingencies.

Yet, these material improvements raise a deeper question: Has the Indian Army’s mental map of conflict shifted as decisively as its infrastructure? For decades, Pakistan shaped the Army’s institutional memory, operational reflexes, and doctrinal instincts. The challenge now is not merely redeployment or logistics—it is a fundamental reorientation of strategic thinking.

From Pakistan to China: Recognition vs. Reorientation

There is little doubt within the Army’s top and middle leadership that China is India’s principal long-term military challenge. But recognition is not the same as reorientation. The Army’s strategic intuition—honed through wars with Pakistan and years of counter-insurgency—still gravitates toward assumptions of short, bounded conflicts, predictable escalation ladders, and familiar operational patterns.

China presents a qualitatively different problem. It disputes almost the entire border and claims large parts of Arunachal Pradesh. It enjoys numerical superiority, industrial depth, and technological integration across domains. Its strategic intent is opaque, complicating deterrence. And it operates from a position of asymmetry, not parity.

The real risk is not underestimating China’s capabilities, but underestimating how profoundly India’s own assumptions must evolve.

The PLA’s Playbook: Incremental Gains, Prolonged Pressure

Unlike Pakistan’s overt provocations, China employs a calibrated strategy of incremental territorial assertion or the classic ‘salami slicing’ approach. There have been several examples of Chinese intrusions during the past four decades: Sumdorong Chu in Tawang district (1986–87), a sudden encroachment that led to rapid forward deployment of Indian formations along the LAC; Doklam (2017) which resulted in a 73‑day confrontation over Bhutanese territory; Galwan (2020), the first fatal clash in decades; Depsang (since 2020) where the Chinese have denied access to our patrols to traditionally used points (PP10–13) without firing a shot; and Demchok marked by persistent tent encroachments to alter the status quo.

These actions achieve territorial control without kinetic conflict, challenging the Indian Army’s traditional equation of control with firepower or physical presence.

The ongoing Eastern Ladakh standoff—now in its fourth year—has forced India into a posture of sustained high readiness, with nearly 60,000 troops deployed on each side. This is a strategic rhythm unfamiliar to an institution accustomed to short, decisive engagements.

China’s Priorities: A Window, Not a Comfort Zone

China has neither resolved the border issue nor escalated into full-scale conflict. This is not benign restraint—it is strategic prioritisation. Beijing’s primary focus remains competition with the United States, focus on Taiwan and the South China Sea, consolidating primacy in the Indo-Pacific and managing its rise as a pole in a bipolar world.

It can be surmised that for the present, India is a secondary theatre for China, but that does not reduce the danger. If anything, it offers India time to prepare, not an excuse for complacency. Treating the present bilateral equation as a template for the future would be a grave error.

Force Structure: Moving Beyond the Pakistan Comfort Zone

For decades, the Army’s force structure has been optimised for the western front—armour–infantry integration, massed artillery, and rapid manoeuvre across plains and semi-desert terrain. Concepts like Cold Start were built around compressed timelines and shallow objectives.

The LAC, running through mountains and valleys in extreme altitude presents a different reality. The possibility of manoeuvre is reduced, as is the relative relevance of armour, mobility depends on infrastructure, not speed of advance, ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) becomes central due to unpredictable PLA dispositions. And long-range fires, drones, and EW matter more than traditional mass.

China’s order of battle is fluid, technology-heavy, and deeply integrated across domains. Systems like the PCL‑191 long-range rocket artillery, Wing Loong II UCAVs, J‑20 stealth fighters in Hotan and Ngari Gunsa, and BeiDou-enabled targeting networks give the PLA a decisive edge in sensing, striking, and sustaining operations, as does the deployment of persistent UAV and satellite surveillance in Eastern Ladakh.

Technology Absorption: From a Year to a Decade

The Russia–Ukraine war and India’s own Op Sindoor have underscored the new primacy of drones, precision fires, cyberwarfare, and electronic warfare in modern conflict. India’s technology absorption, however, still reflects legacy thinking centered on artillery dominance and tactical air support.

The Army’s decision to designate 2024 as the Year of Technology Absorption is commendable. But if China is the primary adversary, this must become a decade-long transformation, not a symbolic initiative. Specifically, India must accelerate UCAV and swarm drone acquisition, counter-drone systems, AI-enabled ISR fusion, long-range precision fires, cyber and EW integration and space-based surveillance utilization.

We must remember that the PLA’s advantage lies not only in possessing these systems, but in integrating them into a coherent operational ecosystem.

Leadership and Mindset: Preparing for Ambiguity, Not Action

Institutional habits matter. For years, career progression has rewarded counter-insurgency experience and western-front tenures. These remain valuable, but they do not prepare leaders for ambiguity management, ISR-driven operations, technology-heavy battlefields, logistics in extreme terrain, strategic signalling discipline, or wars of position and patience.

The Army is aware of these challenges, but the key is to create institutional incentives that cultivate leaders comfortable with prolonged standoffs, multi-domain integration, and strategic ambiguity.

Infrastructure: From Defensive Logic to Strategic Control

India’s border infrastructure has historically been shaped by a defensive mindset—selective development to prevent exploitation. China, meanwhile, has built dense road–rail networks, dual-use ‘Xiaokang’ border villages that serve as a civil–military integration tool, integrated logistics hubs and airfields and heliports across Tibet and Xinjiang.

This would allow the PLA to mobilise a division within 48–72 hours, a tempo India must be able to match. The current infrastructure push is welcome, but it needs a quantum leap, not incremental improvement.

Pakistan Remains Relevant—But Not Primary

Pakistan remains an operational reality requiring vigilance. But treating it as the primary reference point risks preparing for the most familiar threat, not the most consequential one. India must manage two active fronts, but its long-term doctrinal evolution must be shaped by China.

Confusing operational immediacy with strategic primacy is a mistake India can ill afford.

The Hardest Shift Is Mental, Not Material

The Indian Army has consistently met national expectations. But the most difficult transformation ahead is not about equipment or deployment—it is about mindset. Shifting the institutional map of conflict with Pakistan to China requires boldly questioning inherited assumptions, rethinking comfort zones, accepting prolonged ambiguity, embracing multi-domain warfare and prioritising technology and ISR.

Success in future conflicts will depend less on replicating what worked in the past and more on the willingness to think differently.

The question is no longer whether the Army recognises China as the primary challenge.
The real question is whether it is prepared to reimagine itself because of it.

(Maj Gen Neeraj Bali, SM (Retd) is the Director of the Gyan Chakra Think Tank. He is also the author of The Winning Culture: Lessons from the Indian Army to Transform Your Business. The views expressed are his own)

Strategic autonomy has become the defining phrase of India’s foreign policy, the flavour of the season in a global discourse on geopolitics. But in a world where the major powers are jostling for influence, what does strategic autonomy look like for an aspirational country at the threshold of rising to become a power in its own right, without being boxed in?

For India, strategic autonomy is not a nostalgic return to the Cold War non‑alignment. It is a far more assertive idea: the freedom to choose partners issue by issue, the flexibility to cooperate without being captured, and the confidence to say “yes” or “no” based purely on national interest. It does not imply equidistance, but staying effective, not avoidance-driven but seeking leverage in the national interest.

The Ukraine war made this clearer than any policy document ever could. India abstained at the UN a dozen times, avoided naming Russia as the aggressor, and expanded Russian oil imports from 2 percent to over 35 percent. Simultaneously, it deepened military cooperation with the United States in the Indo‑Pacific and held its ground against Chinese pressure along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Each decision had its logic. Together, they showed the agility—and the strain—of India’s strategic autonomy.

The real question is not whether India should continue to pursue strategic autonomy, because that is not debatable. The only question worth asking is whether this form of autonomy is giving India more leverage or simply buying time. Some clues can be read from the world’s response India’s policy of strategic autonomy.

The United States: High Expectations, Uneasy Edges

In Washington, India is regarded an indispensable partner in the Indo‑Pacific. For decades, the US nurtured its relationship with India as a large, democratic, strategically located, and willing to be a bulwark against authoritarian China. Defence cooperation has grown rapidly: more exercises like the annual Yudh Abhyas (the author led a brigade in one of its earlier editions) and more intelligence sharing have led to greater interoperability. Beginning with the easing of nuclear restrictions after the marathon parleys between Jaswant Singh-Strobe in the early 2000s, the US has continued to open doors to advanced technologies that were once unthinkable.

Yet American policymakers have occasionally voiced a concern: India is still too cautious and hedges as a policy. The QUAD works for India precisely because it avoids binding commitments. But for the US, this informality sometimes feels like India wants the benefits of partnership—deterrence, technology, diplomatic support—without the political alignment that usually accompanies them.

This criticism misses a crucial point. India’s caution is not indecision; it is geography. Unlike US allies in Europe or East Asia, India faces two nuclear‑armed adversaries on its borders, one of whom is relentless in inflicting terrorist violence on India. It cannot afford rigid alliances. Strategic autonomy is not a diplomatic indulgence; it is a strategic necessity.

Still, India must ensure that autonomy does not look like hesitation. Influence grows when partners see consistency, not just intent.

Russia: A Relationship Running on Momentum

India’s ties with Russia have drawn global scrutiny since the Ukraine war. Expanded oil imports and high‑profile meetings have created an impression of continuity. But the reality is more nuanced.

But the reality also is that India’s dependence on Russian defence equipment has been declining for years. In 2010, Russia supplied over 70 percent of India’s defence imports; today it is closer to 45 percent and falling. New‑generation defence cooperation has slowed, and Russia’s growing closeness to China has reduced the comfort India once enjoyed.

For Moscow, India is a useful symbol of non‑Western partnership. For New Delhi, Russia remains relevant for legacy platforms, spare parts, and diplomatic balance. But it is no longer the strategic anchor it once was when it actively stood by India in the run-up to the Indo-Pak war of 1971 by signing the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation.

This shift is not a failure of autonomy. It is a natural evolution driven by diversification, Russia’s own limitations, and India’s expanding options.

China: The Neighbour That Shapes Everything

China is India’s most consequential challenge—militarily, economically, and geopolitically. From Beijing’s perspective, India’s strategic autonomy has not deterred Chinese assertiveness. Despite multiple rounds of talks and confidence‑building measures, China continues to test India along the LAC. The 2020 Galwan clash—the first deadly encounter in decades—was a brutal reminder that China could take risks to alter the status quo.

India has responded with a prudent mix of firmness and restraint: forward deployments, infrastructure upgrades like the recently upgraded Nyoma airfield, and the Sela tunnel, and a clear refusal to accept unilateral changes. But China still sees India as cautious—capable but unwilling to escalate. This perception matters because deterrence is as much about signalling as it is about strength.

Yet India cannot afford permanent hostility with China. Geography demands realism and China is not just a rival; it is a neighbour with whom India shares a 3,400‑km border and a massive trade relationship. China is already one of the two powers in an increasingly bipolar world. Stabilising the relationship is not a concession; it is a strategic necessity.

The key is to separate engagement from accommodation. Engagement prevents crises while accommodation accepts unfavorable outcomes. India must do the former without slipping into the latter.

This requires discipline: steady military signalling, controlled economic exposure, and avoidance of political theatrics. Compete where necessary, cooperate where possible, and deter where required—without letting China dominate India’s strategic imagination. But the bottom-line is that India would do well to improve its relationship with China. This is a pivot worth making.

Domestic Strength: The Real Backbone of Autonomy

No country becomes a great power while battling internal weaknesses. India’s domestic challenges—economic inequality, job creation, manufacturing depth, and social tensions—are real. But they must be seen in context.

India remains one of the fastest‑growing major economies. Its digital public infrastructure—from Aadhaar to UPI—is now a global reference point. Its democracy, despite noise and friction, remains resilient. Social tensions exist, but they have not led to institutional breakdown.

Still, domestic constraints shape external influence. India’s manufacturing base is improving but not yet deep enough to absorb large‑scale supply‑chain shifts away from China. Defence production has made progress—witness the BrahMos export to the Philippines—but remains limited in scale and sophistication. Surge capacity, essential in prolonged conflict, is still modest.

These must not be seen as signs of stagnation. They are signs of a country in transition—moving from a developing economy to a major power. Strategic autonomy is meaningful only when domestic capacity keeps pace with external ambition. India is on that path, but the foundation is still being built.

Deterrence: The Missing Link in India’s Rise

India increasingly recognises the reality of a two‑front challenge, a situation even more complicated because of Bangladesh’s internal instability. Military modernisation is underway, budgets have grown, and operational experience is substantial. But deterrence is not built on intent alone. It requires sustained capability, industrial depth, and the ability to impose costs.

India’s defence industrial base is improving but still relies heavily on imports for critical technologies. Production timelines remain slow. Integration into global supply chains is limited. These gaps matter because India’s primary security challenges are immediate and proximate.

Strategic autonomy cannot become a substitute for preparedness. Autonomy must be backed by credible military power and economic mass. These cannot be improvised; they require long‑term investment and political discipline. The key is to take a long-term view and develop capabilities even if bigger sacrifices of budgetary allocations need to be made.

Strategic Discipline: The Next Phase of Autonomy

For strategic autonomy to remain credible, India must practise strategic discipline. Not all threats or partnerships are equal. India must rank its interests and allocate resources accordingly. Summits matter, but we must continue to focus more on outcomes rather than optics. Implementation matters more and real influence comes from agreements that work and institutions that deliver. To match our ambition with capability, our national focus should be to increase the manufacturing depth and defence production. Foreign policy must be sequenced to domestic capacity. Also, we must continue to make selective but firm commitments. Autonomy does not mean avoiding commitments but choosing them carefully. Limited, well‑designed commitments can enhance leverage. Finally, we should have a multi‑track China strategy, one that has deterrence, engagement, and competition on parallel tracks. Qualitative improvement of relations with China will strengthen our hand and remove a few vulnerabilities.

Conclusion: Autonomy Must Be Earned, Not Asserted

In a fractured world, strategic autonomy remains India’s best option. It protects sovereignty, preserves flexibility, and reflects India’s historical experience with great‑power politics. But autonomy without capability invites pressure. Autonomy without credibility risks overstatement.

India’s challenge is not to abandon strategic autonomy but to anchor it more firmly in domestic strength, military preparedness, and disciplined prioritisation. As India’s interests expand, its means must expand too. Freedom of choice in geopolitics is not a declaration; it is an achievement.

India is on that path. The task now is to stay the course with clarity and discipline.

(This article was first published in https://www.lifeofsoldiers.com/)