Rabia Akhtar
@Rabs_AA
When a leading analyst like Ashley Tellis argues that India’s Pakistan obsession is self-defeating and strategically incoherent, it’s worth paying attention. His Foreign Affairs piece lays bare how New Delhi’s fixation on outmaneuvering Pakistan continues to undercut India’s ability to confront its real challenge: China.

Modi’s government is only the latest in a line of Indian leaderships that have struggled with this. As Tellis points out, India’s strategic autonomy mantra and its reluctance to align squarely with the United States has long been framed as a multipolar ideal. Yet this posture has delivered neither security nor the great-power status India seeks.

If India has not managed a fundamental shift despite two decades of deepening U.S. ties, what exactly would it take for such a redirection to happen? Until then, India remains caught in a cycle of balancing illusions, unable to transcend its own Pakistan complex and unwilling to fully anchor its future in a coherent grand strategy.

https://x.com/Rabs_AA/status/1939684438503264528

----------------
Will the Modi government’s policies and beliefs thwart India’s international ambitions?

https://www.youtube.com/live/pnev9iJ3LZI

India believes it could be a rival of China in 25 year’s time. But is that likely? India wants to be a superpower by 2050. But is that a realistic ambition? In other words, is Viksit Bharat achievable? Ashley Tellis, The Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes India’s economic performance, its foreign affairs strategies and the authoritarian and illiberal practices of the Modi government could thwart India’s proud ambitions. That’s the message of his recent essay in Foreign Affairs magazine. But what are his reasons for coming to this conclusion?

-------------

India’s Great-Power Delusions
How New Delhi’s Grand Strategy Thwarts Its Grand Ambitions
Ashley J. Tellis

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/india/indias-great-power-delusions

Since the turn of the century, the United States has sought to help India rise as a great power.


In military terms, it is the most significant conventional power in South Asia, but here, too, its advantages over its local rival are not enormous: in fighting in May, Pakistan used Chinese-supplied defense systems to shoot down Indian aircraft. With China on one side and an adversarial Pakistan on the other, India must always fear the prospect of an unpalatable two-front war. Meanwhile, at home, the country is shedding one of its main sources of strength—its liberal democracy—by embracing Hindu nationalism. This evolution could undermine India’s rise by intensifying communal tensions and exacerbating problems with its neighbors, forcing it to redirect security resources inward to the detriment of outward power projection. The country’s illiberal pivot further undermines the rules-based international order that has served it so well.

Post

See new posts
Conversation
Harmeet KKaur
@HarmeetKKaur
"The emperor is naked!"
Modi 3.0
Modi’s Hollow Vishwaguru persona,
Diminished at Home, Diminished abroad .

Hartosh Singh Bal and Sushant Singh, discuss how Narendra Modi’s projected image as a “vishwaguru” is visionless and merely a spectacle aimed at his nationalist fanbase in India.
The Reflection of Modi’s diminished status in his third term, both in the BJP and vis-à-vis the RSS.

Modi’s role, from State Elections to Operation Sindoor, is now far smaller than the Prime Minister once insisted on.

Objective analysis by Hartosh Singh Bal and Sushant Singh, Calm and collected demeanour .
https://youtu.be/VYcQBSEtJdA?si=HP2Nzgdh-MMqm2_o

Rabia Akhtar
@Rabs_AA
If it still takes an official statement by India’s Foreign Minister to convince Quad partners about India’s counterterrorism compulsions, then Ashley Tellis was right, India’s Pakistan obsession is a domestic compulsion, not a shared global concern. May 2025 should have clarified who provoked whom. That it didn’t, says more about how unconvinced India’s partners remain of its actions than about any imagined consensus on Pakistan.

https://x.com/Rabs_AA/status/1940114049657614515

-----------

Sadanand Dhume
@dhume
Pretty unambiguous statement here from Jaishankar in Washington. Bottomline: For the Quad to work for India the grouping will have to take on board Indian concerns about Pakistan-backed terrorist groups.

https://x.com/dhume/status/1940083684025028766

-----------------


Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
My remarks to the press before Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Washington DC.

https://x.com/DrSJaishankar/status/1940050732662845466