By Qamar Bashir
After Joe Biden humiliated India by declining to preside over India’s Republic
Day celebration, the country invited French President Emmanuel Macron in an
attempt to regain lost pride. Macron was an easy target, drawn in by India’s large
reserves of money and exploiting its false sense of insecurity, he agreed only to
draw more orders to boost the French economy, which is struggling with high
unemployment, a large national debt, and social issues. By conveniently ignoring
India's heinous human rights record and subhuman actions in illegally occupied
Jammu and Kashmir, the persecution of religious minorities throughout all of
India, and the use of brute force to put an end to more than 25 separatist
movements—actions that France has consistently denounced—Marcon effectively
consented to and participated in the event.
Marcon successfully signed multi-billion dollar transactions by fully exploiting the
circumstances. Indian perspectives, on the other hand, were different. They
believed that these agreements would help France break its long-standing defense
relationship with Pakistan, dispel its delusion of insecurity, and support its
desperate attempt to tip the scales of power in the Indian Ocean and the
surrounding region in its favor, particularly with regard to China and Pakistan.
Although agreements were made in public to produce H125 helicopters together
using localized and indigenous parts, behind closed doors an industrial defense
roadmap was negotiated for future cooperation on co-design, co-development, and
co-production of defense supply chains, replicating India's cooperative efforts with
the United States. The range of agreements inked covered everything from aircraft
to robotics, cyber-defence, land and marine combat (particularly underwater
domain awareness), space, and artificial intelligence-led vehicles, which included
the launch of military satellites with both offensive and defensive capabilities.
Two massive multibillion dollar agreements were reached to acquire three more
Scorpene-class conventional submarines and an additional 26 Rafale-M fighter jets
for the Indian Navy's aircraft carriers. Additionally, both parties agreed to
collaborate on the development and launch of military satellites to both track the
movements of adversaries and safeguard India's space assets in the event of an
emergency.
Not only is France milking India, but the USA, Russia, and Israel are doing the
same. They are tricking India into believing that it is in danger from nuclear-armed
Pakistan and powerful China by instilling a false sense of insecurity, but in reality,
they are robbing India of foreign exchange with the sole intent of maintaining their
defense-related industries, boosting their economies, and creating jobs for their
citizens.
What India hopes to achieve by spending billions on military weapons is irrational,
ridiculous, and unreal. Pakistan, a nuclear power with a strong, nimble, and ready
armed force, cannot be intimidated by it.
These arsenals of weapons are equally ineffective against China, which has
demonstrated its superiority in all border standoffs over the past few decades, most
notably in the Tawang sector of Arunachal Pradesh in 2022, the Galwan Valley in
2020, which resulted in the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers, and in numerous other
skirmishes that occurred in Pangong Tso, Sikkim, and eastern Ladakh. Now that
China is providing them a protective shield, not even India can intimidate its
smaller neighbors like SriLanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives.
Similar to France, the USA is defrauding India by creating the false impression
that, with US assistance, India might compete with China, despite the fact that
India's military power is far inferior to China's. By massage India's inflated ego,
the United States has so far sold $220 billion worth of military hardware,
ostensibly to modernize the country's armed forces and wean it off of Russia.
Nevertheless, rather than altering anything in the region, the United States has
succeeded in bolstering the United States' flagging economy and creating jobs for
its people.
By taking advantage of India, Russia and Israel, like France and the USA, are able
to maintain their economies, military industries, and job opportunities for their
citizens. Russia has been supplying enough armaments to cover more than 70% of
India's military hardware needs since the cold war until 2017. Russia sold India
weapons worth $144 billion between 1991 and 2019, and in just 2017–19, he sold
$15 billion worth of military hardware, including Su-30MKI fighter jets, T-90
tanks, BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles, Kalashnikov rifles, and BrahMos guided
sea-to-sea missiles.
What India hopes to achieve by spending billions on military weapons is irrational,
ridiculous, and unreal. Pakistan, a nuclear power with a strong, nimble, and ready
armed force, cannot be intimidated by it.
China cannot and will not be intimidated by India by any stretch of imagination.
India has little possibility of surpassing China in the upcoming centuries. China's
economy, which is only second in strength to that of the United States, is worth
$18 trillion, whereas India's economy is only $3.4 trillion. With 2.03 million active
personnel—nearly 600,000 more than India's 1.45 million—it has the largest
standing army in the world. With a military budget of $229 billion as opposed to
India's $73.9 billion, it can afford to create cutting-edge weapons. China is a strong
nuclear deterrent with 320 nuclear weapons compared to India's 150. China has a
strong air force with 3,304 combat aircraft, over 1,000 more than India's 2,296.
To counter China's ascent and gain a major role in the Indo-Pacific region's
security architecture, the USA, France, and Israel are fortifying their defense ties
with India. These goals are being attained at India's expense. They are sapping
India's hard-earned foreign cash to keep their economies afloat. Knowing full well
that by doing this, they are avoiding military cooperation with pakistan and
bringing Pakistan, a significant South Asian nation, closer to Beijing. This is not a
logical or rational approach. They are well aware that their attempts to artificially
support India are ineffective. They are fully aware that conventional military
domination is a riskier and less practical option when nuclear weapons are present
on both sides. Their self-serving concerns with Pakistan now primarily center on
counterterrorism and regional stability rather than defense connections.
For Pakistan, the benefits of this compelling security paradigm are greater than
ever. Pakistan is forced to pursue self-sufficiency in defense manufacture due to a
reduction in military hardware supply from traditional partners like the USA and
France. It is making investments in its own defense sector to create and produce a
greater variety of military hardware, such as naval vessels, combat aircraft—most
notably the JF-17, which it co-developed with China—and small arms.
In order to decrease dependency on foreign suppliers in fields like electronics,
avionics, and missile technology, there is a greater emphasis on domestic research
and development. Pakistan has maintained its military preparedness and strategic
independence by aiming for self-sufficiency, even in the face of shifting
international defense alliances and supply dynamics.
Moreover, Pakistan is replacing both the USA and France with China and Turkey
by building ties and seeking collaborations with other countries for technology
transfer, joint production agreements, and co-development projects.
This may have been an understanding with China and Pakistan, who did not even
bother to acknowledge or comment on the fact that France and India are inking
extensive agreements expressly to strengthen India's defense capabilities and
modernize India's armed forces against China and Pakistan. As a result, the signing
of these significant accords was largely ignored. They may have known better than
India that all of India's sophisticated gear, ammo, and military software would
eventually rust in the warehouses.
