INDIA'S STRATEGIC IMPERATIVES 2025 DICTATE COMPLETE INCAPACITATION OF PAKISTAN ARMY NOT MERELY DETERRENCE

India has reached a strategic tipping point in May 2025 wherein in wake of horrific Pahalgam Massacre of targeted 26 Hindu-killings bearing signature of Pakistan Army proxies' handiwork, it should be abundantly clear that India's earlier 'Deterrent Strategies' are no longer effective. 

India's strategic imperatives in May 2025 therefore now dictate a switch-over from 'Deterrence' to 'Complete Incapacitation of Pakistan Army' as the overriding aim of the Indian State. 

'Complete Incapacitation of Pakistan Army needs to be achieved by a comprehensive blueprint combining diplomatic and economic degradation of Pakistan followed by a final devastatingly crippling kinetic operations inflicted on Pakistan Army with full force of India's predominant military might.

India's PM Modi-led Government seems already on the above trajectory. Diplomatic Isolation of Pakistan with renewed vigor is already under way. 

 War by Economic Means has been applied by Modi Government on an unprecedented scale against Pakistan in terms of banning all trade with Pakistan and closure of Indian ports to Pakistani shipping.

 For the first time in India's political history, the Modi Government has suspended the Indus Water Treaty and stopped the flow of waters to Pakistan. This use of the 'water weapon' is having a devastating effect on Pakistan.

Pakistan and Pakistan Army is on a 'suspenseful edge' unable to decipher when India will strike with its full kinetic military force of all its three Services. This psychological attrition is weighing down heavily on the Pakistan Army which in tandem is internally besieged in Baluchistan by the armed attacks of Baluchistan Freedom Front. 

Pakistan's Western Front today is militarily besieged both in Baluchistan and Taliban Afghanistan incensed by expulsion of over a million Afghans living in Pakistan for decades.

Militarily, the picture is grim for Pakistan Army with both its Western and Eastern Fronts besieged and the prospects of an Indian Navy blockade of Karachi.

Within India too, Indian public opinion is clamoring for decisive military action against Pakistan Army to put an end to its proxy terrorism against India by Islamic Jihadi terrorist groups financed, armed and facilitated by Pakistan Army's ISI.

'Complete Incapacitation' of the Pakistan Army and defanging its missiles arsenal has now emerged in May 2025 as the overriding strategic imperative of India's Modi Government which has never shied away from robust military actions against India's enemies.

Of course, Pakistan will retaliate with military desperation inflicting damages on India too. But that has to be accepted if Pakistan Army as a potent threat to India's National Security is to be achieved. India has already put into operation Civil Defence measures. 

Now the big question is when India will apply its kinetic military force with full crippling force? 

Or is India awaiting Pakistan Army to undertake preemptive strikes on India to shift the onus of war on Pakistan Army?

Whatever be the case, the Fifth War with Pakistan is underway. The question is not 'if' but 'when'?

Concluding, this should be applied sequentially when India's 'War by Economic Means' is fully in 'Overdrive' inducing public unrest in Punjab and divisive fissures in Pakistan's polity and Pakistan Army. Indicators ae so emerging.

The overall aim should be to CRIPPLE PAKISTAN ARMY & ITS MILITARY ADVENTURISM!!! 

PAKISTAN'S STRATEGY OF ENLISTING MAJOR POWERS COUNTERVAILENCE AGAINST INDIA GEOPOLITICALLY INOPERATIVE IN 2025

Pakistan ever since its emergence as an independent nation with Partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947 by outgoing British colonial rulers has persistently confronted India militarily, adopting a strategy of enlisting "Major Powers Countervailence" geopolitical weightage.

This geopolitical weightage carried an element of 'poetical permissiveness' which enabled Pakistan to indulge in repeated wars against India coupled with Pakistan Army sponsored Islamic Jihadi terrorism against India.

Seventy-five years down the line since 1947, is a good enough timespan to objectively analyze whether Pakistan 's adoption of "Major Powers Countervailence Strategy" has enabled Pakistan to reap strategic dividends against India.

Pakistan sequentially banked in terms of Countervailing Power on Britain, the United States and then finally on Communist China. There were however overlaps amongst the Major Powers in providing countervailing power e.g. the convergence of United States and China in supporting Pakistan jointly. during the 1990s and till quite lately.

Pakistan's "Major Powers Countervailence Strategy" has failed as geopolitical realities in 2025 would indicate. The United States is today locked in a robust Global Strategic Partnership with India, China though continuing in military confrontation with India is politically reaching out to India since Galwan 2020 and  moreso now with Trump2:0 advent in United States and Britain does not count much.

Pakistan in 2025 presents the political picture of a 

'Dysfunctional State' tottering politically and economically. Chiefly, this arises from the economic costs of its unremitting military confrontation with India.

United States in earlier decades and China's ongoing heavy military support to Pakistan was corelated to their geopolitical objectives at a given point of time and not unlimited. 

 

Strategically ironic for Pakistan is that despite sizeable US military rearmament and China's buildup of Pakistan's nuclear and missiles arsenal, Pakistan could not militarily get the better of India in all the Wars that it launched in 1948, 1965, 1971 & 19999.

Pakistan however has refused to learn or strategically ignore the bitter lessons that passage of time has thrust on it. 

The megalomanic egos of Pakistan Army Chiefs and its Collegium of Corps Commanders empowered by possession of nuclear weapons has put them in a military trance that India is powerless in launching crippling military strikes against Pakistan.

The latest terrorism attack in Pahalgam in Kashmir Valley inflicted by Islamic Jihadi terrorists' affiliates of Pakistan Army resulting in loss of 30 Hindu lives should mark a 'Turning Point' for India to strike military blows to destroy Pakistan Army's military adventurism against India.

Lastly, The geopolitical environment in 2025   is in India's favor ruling out any significant provision of United States or China's "Countervailence Support" for Pakistan against India, should India militarily strike Pakistan Army and its infrastructure.

India should follow the Israeli maxim: 'When you have to strike the enemy, then strike hard with full crippling force'.

    

 and China

UNITED STATES AND CHINA LOCKED IN STEEP ESCALATORY CONFRONTATION APRIL 2025: THE ENDGAME?

 Communist China has long figured as a 'Prime Threat' in US strategic planning but a veneer of respectability and a halo of "Superpower-in-Making' was endowed by United States compelled by its 'Risk Aversion' strategy determined by then prevailing geopolitical imperatives.

The United States under both preceding US Administrations of Trump 1:0 and Biden Administration had switched over to 'Hard Line' policies against China in view of China escalating military tensions in Indo Pacific and the Dual Threat posed by the Russia-China Axis.

Contemporary global geopolitics in 2025 in Trump 2:0 era seems to have convinced President Trump to stop China from further undermining of US security and economic interests on realization of failure pf his 'Reverse Nixon' strategy with Russia

 In mid-2025, Communist China is facing a virtual existential crisis alongside with questions surfacing of the continuance in power of President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party. 

The above eventuality becomes analytically logical when China's backdrop of current bleak economic prospects coupled with growing political discontent against President Xi Jinping, indicated by uninterrupted purges of military hierarchy and CCP functionaries, are calculated. 

President Trump in April 2025 has struck Communist China with a massive Trade/Tariffs Wars sledgehammer blow at a time when China is engulfed in a critical economic crisis struggling with deflation, rising unemployment and flight of capital coupled with political dissent.

Contextually, with both the United States and China having adopted hardened policy trajectories, escalating by the day, the critical question that emerges is 'Who Will Blink First' to exit from the escalatory loop? United States or Russia? Further, what is United States endgame?

China had prepared itself for an intensified Trade War with President Trump 2:0, going by Trump 1:0 Trade War policies. But the scale of US intensification of imposing massive Tariffs swiftly may not have been foreseen by China.

Many policy analysts opine that President Trump's present economic offensive against China is a part of his 'bluff and bluster' strategy and that the US President will resile from this hard approach once China strikes a 'Deal' with United States on US terms.

In global geopolitics and geoeconomics many 'Grey Areas' are operative. Discounting them, the analysis gets confined to examining the basic factors of 'Intentions' and 'Relative Strengths' of China and the United States against the given backdrop of unfolding geopolitical dynamics.

On these two counts, today China is on a weaker wicket than the United States.

China can whip up 'Hyper Nationalism' sentiments against United States and resort to military escalation in Indo Pacific to offset President Trump's 'Economic Coercion' but presently President Xi Jinping's political existence is threatened, judging by his repeated purges of Chinese military hierarchy.

The United States is apparently prepared for the above eventuality going by recent US military moves in Western Pacific. 

If the odds are in favor of the United States and China is on a weaker wicket, then it is fair to assume that China could expectedly blink first by offering a partial' Sweet Deal' to President Trump.

Ongoing Chinese retaliatory economic strikes against United States and vocal assertions by President Xi Jinping suggest to the contrary.

China too is hardening its confrontational stances in near equal measure. Obviously, because the very political existence of President Xi Jinping in power in Beijing is at stake.

What is then the 'End Game' of the United States against Communist China and its President Xi Jinping? 

Logical analysis would suggest that with China's ongoing economic and strategic vulnerabilities the US endgame is to bring about the demise of Communist China and its all too powerful President Xi Jinping. 

That is the only way in which the United States can neutralize the 'China Threat' actively operative against the United States since 2001 and proactively since 2013 with President Xi Jinping becoming President.

Wishful thinking? Not really. Historical precent exists.

The United States brought about the disintegration of the mighty Communist Superpower--the Soviet Union, by first inflicting an 'Arms Race' (Reagan Years and thereafter) and then struck the final blow by economically pulling the rug from under an economically vulnerable USSR President Gorbachev. Rest is history.

While the United States may have recently brought about discordant notes with its Allies in Europe and Pacific, the nuances may have changed, but the overall value of US Alliance relationship will endure and be operative in the final showdown with China.

China has no "Natural Allies" to boast of. Ironic, because North Korea has gravitated to Russia and Pakistan is wooing United Stat.

China is at critical crossroads where whatever steps China takes either to exit the 'Escalatory Loop' with the United States. or gamble by imposing an armed conflict in Western Pacific, CHINA DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE ANY 'WIIN /WIN OPTIONS!!

 

 

UNITED STATES PRESIDENT TRUMP 2:0 CHINA STRATEGY: RISK AVERSION OR LULL BEFORE THE STORM?

President Trump in his second term has yet to unfold the precise contours of his 'China Strategy' excepting some conciliatory moves in run-up to his re-election and some notional increase in tariffs. This leads to the crucial question whether President Trump 2:0 is going to revert to long-practiced US 'Risk Aversion' China strategies or is this a 'Lull before the Storm'? 

In an earlier Article, I had surmised that President Trump would await to see how his Russia-tilt policy would pan out, before he makes his moves on China.

China Risk Aversion Strategy: Can President Trump Afford This in 2025 Geopolitical Scenario?

'China Hedging' and 'Risk Aversion' American strategies were discarded by President Trump in his first term.

President Trump launched Trade Wars against China and in tandem ordered in 2017 the Freedom of Navigation Operations (FNOPS) in which US Navy ships carried out maneuvers in South China Sea whose sovereignty China claimed.

In 2017, President Trump also pro-actively resuscitated the QUAD Security Initiative dormant since 2008. This was a significant political messaging to China.

President Biden's Administration 2020-24 unexpectedly outdid President Trump in continuing American 'Hard- Line' strategy against China.

In 2025 for over a decade, the National Security Strategy documents, the consensus amongst US Senators and Congressman on Capitol Hill and US general public opinion view the China Threat as the Prime Threat to US national security interests and US global influence.

In view of the above factors, geopolitical and strategic logic would leave no political bandwidth to adopt Risk Aversion strategies in relation to China. Even President Trump's MAGA obsession would dictate neutralization of China.

United States-China Stances 2025: The Lull Before the Storm? 

If Risk Aversion strategies against Chuna is not a geopolitical option for President Trump and not a politically wise option in terms of domestic public opinion, then the only viable option for President Trump is to persist in 'Hard -Line' strategies towards China adopted by United States both in Trump 1:0 Administration and Biden Administration, preceding Trump 2:0 Administration.

Why has President Trump in the first sixty days of his second term does not demonstrate any 'Hard-Line' approaches against China when he has adopted unprecedented harshness against NATO Allies in Europe and Ukraine?

The above was seemingly adopted as a measure to reinforce credentials of his 'Russia-tilt' opening strategy which global analysts term it as 'Reverse Kissinger' moves.

Russia even after two months of President Trump's tilt has not responded positively and in equal measure to President Trump's opening geopolitical gambit.

The logical deduction from the above is that Russia is averse to any changes in the "No Limits" strategic nexus with China and committed to the Russia-China Axis as a counterweight to American global predominance.

President Trump now faces in 2025, the challenges faced by United States in the last two decades of a Russia-China Axis posing a 'Dual Threat' in Western Pacific and in Europe.

United States decision in 2025 to reduce US Military Forces in Europe and redeploy them in Western Pacific against China Threat makes military sense. But in tandem President Trump will have to revise his antagonizing stances against NATO Allies in Europe.

President Trump has lost some measure of "Credibility of American Security Guarantees" after abandoning Ukraine to win over Russia.

China as a result of the above gets "emboldened" in Western Pacific to test 'American Credibility" in terms of US security guarantees to protect Taiwan against Chinese Military Invasion and political and military coercion of Japan and the Philippines.

President Trump is in a piquant strategic dilemma, therefore, where any intensification of Trade Wars with China and imposing sanctions on China would not deter China from aggressive military brinkmanship against Taiwan, US Allies like Japan and US security architecture in Western Pacific.

Surely, the import would not be lost on President Trump of recent intensification of Russia-China Axis military moves like large scale Joint Exercises in Western Pacific and Joint Russian- Chinese Combat Air Patrols in vicinity of Japan and even US Bases in Alaska.

Concluding Observations

US President Trump has to face the grim reality that Russia-China Axis will be in full play in Asia Pacific to challenge American predominance.

The above does not afford any strategic bandwidth for President Trump to arrive at any 'Singular Deal' with China to break-out of the gridlock or offer any other US 'geopolitical sweeteners' to China which perceptionally will be viewed by Asia Pacific as a President Trump capitulation.

Strategic logic would dictate that President Trump to uphold the majesty of United States predominance in the Pacific against China's predatory moves would be left with no option other than to "Militarily Challenge China in Asia Pacific " and dispel the Russia-China Axis notion, and more specifically China's strategic perceptions, that United States would prefer 'Risk Aversion' strategy against China rather than a square military confrontation.

The Asia Pacific is today facing a "Lull Before the Storm" in terms of a United States-China Military Confrontation. 

 is to 

D

 of office 2016-20.

UNITED STATES CONFUSING ITS ALLIES AND STRATEGIC PARTNERS WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP 2:0 POLICY STANCES 2025

Global geopolitics have been thrown into uncertainties and uncharted waters by US President Trump 2:0 policy stances and reckless assertions by top US personages leaving United States longstanding Allies and its 'Strategic Partners' confused.

In the pervading geopolitical milieu wherein United States predominance is under a severe pushback by the Russia-China Axis, can the United States be oblivious to the strategic sensitivities of its Allies and Strategic Partner

NATO and Trans-Atlantic unity and solidarity have been seriously dented by US Vice President Vance and Defence Secretary reckless assertions at recent Munich Security Conference and thereafter.

The incendiary faceoff by Ukrainian President Zelensky at the White House with President Trump and Vice President Vance and United States tilt towards Russian demands on Ukraine peace was not only bad optics but generated perceptions that United States is no longer committed to European Security and has abandoned Ukraine which for all practical purposes was fighting a Proxy War for the United States. 

Moving to Asia Pacific where ever since 1945 Japan has been a steadfast US Ally, US President Trump heaped 'Trade Tariffs ' on Japan. The United States forgets that Japan pays handsomely for US Military Forces stationed in Japan.

India which has evolved into a 'Robust Strategic Partner' in the US-India Global Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was publicly threatened with imposition of US Trade Tariffs.

Trade Wars and Trade Tariffs may be a good weapon for use against hostile States like Russia and China, but not against Allies and Strategic Partners.

Such American dismissiveness of US Allies and Strategic Partners has never been witnessed before. Differences in opinion have occurred in the past but were ironed out by 'discreet negotiations' away from public gaze so as not to threaten Allies/Strategic Partners solidarity.

Does the United States really believe that it can retain its global predominance solely on its own economic, military and diplomatic strengths?

Not so really!! 

The mainstays of US global predominance ever since the disintegration of Former USSR and China Threat emerging as the 'Prime Threat to US security' rested on United States military postures in Europe and Asia Pacific and on the cumulative strengths of its European and Asia Pacific Allies,

The United States 'singularly' is not geared today geopolitically in 2025 to dispense with its dependence on United States European Alles and its Asia Pacific Allies. 

Similarly, the United States can ill-afford to antagonize India by threats of Trade Tariffs and sanctions which may be relevant in terms oof Russia and China.

Reflected in my Book: "China India Military Confrontation: 21st Century Perspectives" (2015) was the assertion that in the evolving geopolitical scenarios' United Staes embedment in Asia would be squarely dependent on India adding 'Strategic Ballast' to United States' security architecture against the China Threat.

India has many other geopolitical options other than the United Sates. The United States has India 'ONLY' as the Credible Option against China Threat in the years to come. 

Concluding, one needs to highlight how Asian perceptions of the United States have drastically changed in 2025. Singapore has been a longstanding reliable Ally of the United States and the statement made by Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen at the Munich Security Conference 2025, as reported by South China Morning Post of February 17 2025  reflects sadly and regrettably Asia's changed perceptions of the United States in 2025.

The Singapore Defense Minister asserted that" The image (of United States) has changed from Liberator to Great Disruptor, to a Landlord Seeking Rent." 

The above assertion from one of United States most notable Asian Ally came in a prepared statement posted also on the Government website, as per South China Morning Post dispatch.

Notably this perceptive assertion came soon after United States Trump 2:0 Administration top officials had made it clear at Munich that United States was no longer committed to European Security and abandoning Ukraine.

The big question that perceptively must be plaguing Asian capitals, and especially US Allies and Strategic Partners in Indo Pacific, would be 'If the United States could renege from its security commitments to NATO/European Security, could a similar fate await US Allies and Strategic Partners in Indo Pacific Security in context of the China Threat?' 

Hopefully not. But then it is incumbent upon US President Trump and Trump 2:0Administration seniormost security advisors to clear the geopolitical fog generated by them.

Superpowers are guarantors of global security and stability and not "Rent Collectors" for security services provided in furtherance of their own national interests.

 Munich Conference