NEW YORK, May 18 (APP): After the recent India-Pakistan’s “most expansive combat in half a century”, a leading American newspaper said in a news analysis on Sunday that “Strategically, the battlefield tossup was a clear setback for India.”
“An aspiring diplomatic and economic power, it (India) now finds itself equated with Pakistan, a smaller, weaker country that Indian officials call a rogue sponsor of terrorism,” Times’ correspondents — Mujib Mashal, who is of Afghan origin, and Alex Travelli — wrote in an in-depth dispatch from New Delhi.
Pointing out that Indian forces did manage to inflict some damage at Pakistani air bases, the lengthy dispatch said it followed “only after losing aircraft in aerial face-offs with its longtime adversary.”
“The four-day clash reminded the world about India’s powerlessness to resolve 78 years of conflict” with Pakistan, the Times noted.
“Any act of confrontation plays into the hands of Pakistan, where friction with India has long been a lifeblood,” it said, adding, “Outright military victory is nearly impossible, given the threat from both countries’ nuclear arsenals”.
Citing Interviews with more than a dozen diplomats, analysts and officials, the dispatch said after multiple wars and several failed attempts at solving their disputes, which have shaped the subcontinent ever since Pakistan and India gained independence in 1947, the problem has only grown in complexity.
“The spark is now often asymmetric…. The risk of rapid escalation has increased as both sides deploy drones and other cutting-edge weapons on a large scale for the first time,” the dispatch said.
“At the same time, the leadership in each country has embraced religious nationalism, and each has hardened its views of the other, making any conciliatory gesture all but impossible,” the dispatch said, noting India’s shift to strongman, Hindu-nationalist rule has left it boxed in whenever tensions rise, as the right-wing base of Prime Minister Narendra Modi often calls for blood.
“That makes it harder to show the kind of restraint that India displayed in 2008, when terrorists killed more than 160 people in Mumbai — and to see that a war, beyond satisfying immediate political needs, could set back India’s ascent.”
The Indian government at that time, according to an Indian diplomat, decided against striking Pakistan, adding it wanted to keep the global focus on the terrorist attack and to isolate Pakistan for supporting terrorism, rather than elevate it as a battlefield equal. (Pakistan categorically denied Indian allegations of its involvement in the attack).
Seventeen years later, the report said, India responded by striking Pakistan militarily, “as part of a larger strategy to squeeze their adversary, including the threat of disrupting the flow of crucial cross-border rivers”.
“After the latest hostilities, India has threatened more overt action, saying that any future terrorist attacks will be seen as an act of war — potentially setting up frequent military confrontation as the new norm,” the Times added.