Subject: Geo-politics affecting India’s Interest

Why in the News

At their Washington meeting, the US President and the Chinese President affirmed that the United States and China were victorious allies in World War II. The claim shows the memory of 1945 being used to reshape Asia’s great-power order, a debate India’s strategic community has largely ignored.

How are the great powers using the memory of 1945?

1. History as politics: The past is reinterpreted to serve present politics, so references to the war are “rarely innocent”.
2. Washington’s use: The US President invokes wartime cooperation with Russia and China. Critics see this as cover for his direct outreach to their leaders, which unsettles US allies.
3. Moscow’s use: Victory supports Russia’s claim to a leading role in European security and a return to the “Yalta System”, the US-Soviet order of post-war Europe.
4. Beijing’s use: Posing as a victor of 1945 helps China undermine the “San Francisco System” of US alliances that defined the post-war Asian order.
5. The takeaway: Wartime memory is now a tool for claiming a say in today’s order.

Why does the claim unsettle Taiwan and Japan?

1. Which China: Washington’s wartime ally was the Republic of China (RoC) under Chiang Kai-shek, which now endures in Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) emerged only in 1949.
2. Taipei’s charge: Taiwan accuses Beijing of “narrative diplomacy”, using history to erase its separate identity.
3. Tokyo’s unease: Imperial Japan, the common enemy, is now Washington’s principal Asian ally, and its Prime Minister sought reassurance.
4. Militarism charge: Japan is raising defence spending in response to China’s military edge. Casting Japan as the defeated aggressor lets Beijing brand this as militarism.
5. Enemy state clauses: China opposes Japan’s call to remove the UN Charter’s obsolete “enemy state” clauses against Japan, Germany and Italy. The UN had earlier agreed to drop them.

What does China gain by recasting the war?

1. Targeting the alliance: The San Francisco System, built on the 1951 peace settlement with Japan, centres US strategy on Japan. Beijing wants to weaken it and nudge the US towards a “China-First” Asia policy.
2. Victim narrative: Under Mao the war was awkward, because Chiang’s Nationalist armies did most of the conventional fighting. From the 1980s it anchored a victim story of China’s “century of humiliation”.
3. Victor narrative: Today commemorations, parades and textbooks stress China’s place among the powers that defeated Japan and founded the United Nations.
4. Claim to authority: Historian Rana Mitter shows this memory supports China’s claim to the apex of the global hierarchy, since victory claims a right to shape the order.

Why is India missing from the debate over 1945?

1. Wartime mobilisation: 2.3 million Indians served under arms, from North Africa and Italy to Burma, and 14 million worked in war production.
2. Denied recognition: At a Russia-India-China (RIC) foreign ministers’ meeting, India’s External Affairs Minister called India’s neglect in the post-war order an uncorrected “historical injustice”.
3. Divided movement: The Congress opposed the war and launched Quit India. The Communists backed the war after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Subhas Chandra Bose sought Axis help.
4. Elite neglect: Indian elites ignore how the war shaped Partition and India’s post-war marginalisation, so strategic debate leans on abstract concepts instead of this history.

Challenges

1. Narrative as leverage: China’s victor story gives it grounds to question Japan’s defence build-up and US alliances in Asia.
2. Alliance uncertainty: US outreach to Beijing leaves Indo-Pacific partners, including India, unsure of Washington’s priorities.
3. India’s missing claim: Without an agreed account of its war role, India cannot use 1945 to back its case for a larger global role.

Way Forward

1. Official war histories: The Ministry of Defence should publish accessible histories of Indian campaigns abroad.
2. Commemorative diplomacy: India should mark Burma campaign anniversaries jointly with Southeast Asian partners.
3. Link to UN reform: India should cite its wartime contribution in its case for a permanent UN Security Council seat.

Conclusion

The contest over who won the Second World War is a contest over who shapes Asia’s order now. India’s wartime sacrifice will count only when an agreed account of it backs India’s claim to a larger global role.

About the post-1945 world order

1. Yalta Conference (February 1945): Allied leaders planned Germany’s final defeat and the shape of the post-war order.
2. Founding of the UN: India was an original signatory of the UN Charter in 1945, before independence.
3. Hub-and-spoke alliances: The US signed separate treaties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia and New Zealand, not one NATO-style Asian bloc.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”

Why in the News

The summit between the Chinese President and the US President in Washington produced only a modest package on artificial intelligence (AI). The two powers could not even agree on what to call the technology, and their rivalry now shapes the AI rules India must live under.

What did the summit deliver on AI?

1. Groundwork in New York: At the first AI talks under the two countries’ trade mechanism, on 20 September, Washington proposed a channel to notify AI incidents, meaning AI events with national security consequences.
2. Modest package: The summit confirmed a dialogue on risks and benefits, a channel for incidents and a next meeting by November.
3. Dispute over the name: The White House says the leaders agreed to use the term “super intelligence”. China’s list speaks of a “China-US dialogue on artificial intelligence”.
4. Nuclear control dropped: At Lima (November 2024), the two sides affirmed human control over nuclear-use decisions. Neither fact sheet repeats it, and only China’s list has a military crisis communication memorandum.
5. The takeaway: The two powers agreed to talk about AI risk without agreeing on what it is, so the channel can handle incidents but not set rules.

Why will rivalry, not dialogue, shape the AI order?

1. Race to be won: The US President calls the case for slowing AI a “hoax”. He prefers prosecutors to police AI harms afterwards over regulators acting in advance.
2. Language of control: The Chinese President wants AI “always under human control”. His call for both sides to “play to their strengths” criticised US export controls.
3. Safety as containment: Beijing reads US safety talk as a cover for holding back China. State media accused a US firm of calling distillation (training a cheap model on a stronger model’s outputs) a threat.
4. Regime security first: China’s security minister calls AI “the main battlefield” of rivalry. Party control of labs limits what models may say, not how fast they grow more capable.
5. Tools of competition: The US relies on chip controls and Pax Silica, a US-led network of trusted chip suppliers. China pushes chip self-reliance and open-weight models, which anyone can download and adapt.

What concerns does this raise for India?

1. G2 overlay (a US-China duopoly): The two powers hold most frontier compute, the computing power behind top models, so they can set the rules. In the nuclear order, such deals justified discriminatory controls on others.
2. Two AI systems, two sets of standards: India faces pressure from both camps:
   • Washington expects trusted partners to keep China out of their AI ecosystems;
   • Beijing proposed a BRICS open-source AI community at the New Delhi summit;
   • India is unlikely to join China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (WAICO), a China-centric initiative like the Belt and Road Initiative.
3. Pull of cheap Chinese models: Chinese open-weight models are competitive, cheap and adaptable. Eg. Alibaba’s Qwen has spawned more than 150,000 derivative models.

Challenges

1. Private adoption: Stopping private firms building low-risk apps on Chinese models is hard, as low cost attracts Western and Indian companies. Eg. Singapore, Malaysia and Brazil use them.
2. American dependence: Access to US models can vanish quickly. Eg. June’s brief cut-off of foreign access to top American models.
3. No rival offer in BRICS: India has no alternative yet to the Chinese AI offering in the grouping.

Way Forward

1. Multilateral norms: Welcome US-China risk reduction, but insist on multilateral frontier AI norms and a place in incident-notification arrangements.
2. Nuclear human control: Make human control over nuclear-use decisions part of India’s nuclear discourse, and press all nuclear powers to affirm it.
3. Dual and differentiated de-risking: Bar Chinese models from government systems, critical infrastructure and sensitive data; require security testing and local hosting for private use.
4. Capability at home: Build compute, chips, models, datasets, talent and the ability to test frontier systems independently.
5. Shape BRICS: Insist that BRICS AI initiatives be consensus-based and technology-neutral, rather than cede the space.

Conclusion

The new channel manages incidents between two rivals but leaves the rules for everyone else unsettled. What to watch is whether India is admitted to incident notification, and on what terms the BRICS AI community takes shape.

Government Initiatives for AI capability in India

1. IndiaAI Mission (2024): Treats AI as a public good, built on shared compute, open datasets and decentralised talent development.
2. Shared compute: More than 38,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips that train AI models, form a national compute grid for startups and researchers.
3. AI Kosh: Offers over 360 curated non-personal datasets across sectors such as agriculture, health and climate.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”

Why in the News

India’s nuclear doctrine has remained largely unchanged since it was operationalised in 2003, while the security environment it was written for has shifted. Its core commitments, credible minimum deterrence and a declared No First Use (NFU) posture, have endured across more than two decades. The question now raised is whether a framework crafted for the early 2000s still fits the security challenges of the mid 2020s. The tension is that the doctrine’s chief asset is its predictability, so examining it in public costs something even if nothing is changed, while leaving it unexamined costs something too as the assumptions beneath it shift.

What does India’s 2003 nuclear doctrine commit to?

1. Credible minimum deterrence: India maintains an arsenal sized to inflict unacceptable damage in retaliation rather than to match an adversary weapon for weapon.
2. No First Use: India will not use nuclear weapons first. One stated exception retains the option of nuclear retaliation following a major biological or chemical attack on India or on Indian forces.
3. Massive retaliation: A nuclear attack on India invites retaliation designed to be unacceptable rather than proportionate.
4. Survivability and civilian control: The posture rests on a survivable second strike capability and on firm civilian control of the arsenal.

Where did the doctrine come from?

1. Pokhran II, 1998: The tests established India as a nuclear weapons state.
2. Kargil, 1999: The conflict showed that nuclear deterrence did not rule out conventional war between two nuclear armed neighbours.
3. The 1999 Draft Nuclear Doctrine: It set out the framework the government later acted on, seeking to reconcile deterrence with restraint.
4. The Cabinet Committee on Security decision: On 4 January 2003 the Committee operationalised the posture the draft had proposed.
5. What it delivered: Judged by its original objectives, the doctrine has provided continuity, predictability and strategic stability for more than two decades.

What has changed in the strategic environment since 2003?

1. A closer China and Pakistan alignment: The two nuclear armed neighbours posed distinct challenges when the doctrine was formulated and pose interconnected ones now. China has expanded and modernised its nuclear forces, strengthened military infrastructure along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and deepened defence cooperation with Pakistan, while Pakistan has diversified its capabilities, including tactical nuclear weapons intended to offset India’s conventional advantage.
2. Technologies that reshape deterrence: Artificial Intelligence (AI), cyber capabilities, space based surveillance, hypersonic weapons and ballistic missile defence shorten decision making timelines, increase the vulnerability of command and control networks and complicate assumptions about assured retaliation. They do not invalidate the doctrine’s core principles, they alter the environment those principles must operate in.
3. A more multipolar system: The Indo Pacific has become a key arena of great power competition, shaped by rivalry between the United States and China, closer coordination between China and Russia, and India’s expanding partnerships. Nuclear doctrine can no longer be read through bilateral deterrence alone, since regional crises are increasingly shaped by wider geopolitical competition.

What would a review actually examine?

1. Doctrines as policy instruments: Strategic doctrines are policy instruments rather than immutable documents, so periodic examination is an ordinary act of statecraft.
2. Scope of a review: It could cover emerging technologies, command and control resilience, second strike capabilities and the continuing relevance of existing concepts, including the doctrine’s approach to retaliation.
3. Massive retaliation under scrutiny: Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons were intended to complicate India’s response options below the level of a strategic exchange, which raises the question of whether India’s declaratory posture gives sufficient deterrent clarity across the full range of nuclear contingencies.
4. Review is not revision: A review of NFU could reaffirm its rationale, clarify its scope and confirm that supporting capabilities remain credible, without touching the core principles.

Why does reopening declaratory policy carry its own risk?

1. The reputational asset: The doctrine has reinforced India’s image as a restrained and responsible nuclear power while providing continuity in deterrence.
2. Cost of ambiguity: Ambiguity over established principles, particularly NFU, would create uncertainty, encourage adversaries to recalibrate and complicate crisis management.
3. The stated priority: Strengthening operational capabilities and modernising delivery systems answers the same pressures without reopening declaratory policy at all.

What capabilities must back the declared policy?

1. Survivability: A doctrine that promises retaliation is only as credible as the share of the arsenal that survives a first strike.
2. Command, control and early warning: Command and control, intelligence, early warning and cyber resilience have to be assessed together, since between them they set the time in which a retaliation decision can be taken.
3. The nuclear triad: Delivery across land, air and sea has to be judged as one system rather than platform by platform.
4. Alignment with diplomacy: Nuclear policy has to sit alongside India’s broader diplomatic objectives and its strategic autonomy rather than run separately from them.

Challenges to India’s nuclear deterrent posture

1. Maturity of the sea based leg: The sea leg is the most survivable part of any triad and is also India’s newest and smallest. Eg. INS Arihant, commissioned in 2016, was India’s first indigenously built ballistic missile submarine, and the fleet built around it remains small.
   The Fix: Sustain the submarine building programme to the point where at least one boat can be kept on deterrent patrol continuously.
2. No risk reduction channel with China: India has no bilateral nuclear risk reduction or crisis communication arrangement with its larger nuclear neighbour. Eg. India and Pakistan exchange lists of their nuclear installations every 1 January under the 1988 agreement barring attacks on such facilities, and no comparable arrangement exists with China.
   The Fix: Negotiate a nuclear risk reduction and direct communication arrangement with China on the model of that existing agreement.
3. Exclusion from nuclear export control regimes: India sits outside the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which limits its influence over the rules governing transfers of nuclear technology and material. Eg. China has blocked India’s entry into the Group.
   The Fix: Keep converting bilateral civil nuclear agreements into declared support for membership, so the bid rests on a broader base than a single blocking vote.
4. Opacity of the arsenal: India publishes no official figures on warhead numbers, force posture or readiness, so the credibility of a minimum deterrent rests on assertion rather than on demonstrated capability. Eg. Published estimates of India’s warhead count come from independent research institutes rather than from any official Indian release.
   The Fix: Issue a periodic unclassified statement of doctrine and force posture, as several other nuclear armed states do, so the deterrent is legible without disclosing targets.

Conclusion

India’s declaratory policy and the capability behind it are two different things, and only one of them is genuinely under strain. A doctrine’s value lies in being predictable, so any signal that it is under reconsideration spends the asset it exists to protect. What remains unresolved is whether a posture designed against two separate adversaries holds when those adversaries plan together and the time available to decide keeps shrinking. The marker to watch is whether India’s next set of capability decisions is presented as a review of readiness or as a revision of policy, because the two send opposite signals to the same audiences.

Government Initiatives on Nuclear Deterrence in India

1. Nuclear Command Authority: Constituted in January 2003, it is the body that authorises the use of nuclear weapons, with a Political Council chaired by the Prime Minister and an Executive Council chaired by the National Security Adviser.
2. Strategic Forces Command: Created in 2003 under the Integrated Defence Staff, it manages and administers India’s nuclear delivery systems.
3. Voluntary testing moratorium: India has maintained a unilateral moratorium on further nuclear explosive testing since 1998, while remaining outside the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Back2Basics: Cabinet Committee on Security

1. What it is: The highest decision making body of the Union Cabinet on national security, defence and strategic policy.
2. Composition: It is chaired by the Prime Minister, with the Ministers of Defence, Home Affairs, External Affairs and Finance as its members.
3. Mandate: It clears major defence acquisitions, senior appointments in the security and intelligence establishment, and decisions on nuclear and strategic policy.
4. Basis: It is a Cabinet Committee constituted under the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules, 1961, and is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body.

Matching Previous Year Question

“No direct PYQ traced in the provided files. Closest microtheme: Geo-politics affecting India’s Interest.”

Why in the News

India and China issued separate statements after the meeting between the Prime Minister and the Chinese President on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit hosted by New Delhi. The Chinese statement runs almost three times as long in its English version, and it carries references to greater BRICS cooperation, the Global South, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the G20 that the Indian statement does not. The Chinese President attended after skipping the G20 summit India hosted in 2023, and arrives less than two weeks before a state visit to Washington. The tension is over who the Chinese text is written for. India used the meeting to sustain the thaw for domestic economic reasons and to show the United States that it has other partners. Beijing used the same meeting to signal to Washington rather than to Delhi.

What does the length and focus of the Chinese statement reveal?

1. Audience of the Chinese text: The statement speaks as much to the United States as to India, since it builds out multilateral themes rather than the bilateral agenda. Eg. Its references to greater BRICS cooperation, the Global South, the SCO and the G20 have no counterpart in the Indian statement.
2. Timing against the Washington visit: The Chinese President’s presence in New Delhi comes less than two weeks before a state visit to the United States, so the meeting doubles as positioning ahead of that visit.
3. India’s own calculation: India sought to sustain the thaw for domestic economic reasons. It also used the summit to signal to Washington that it has other partners and can influence them.
4. The difference in restraint: India worked to balance strategic autonomy through BRICS against an even keel with the United States. Beijing used the BRICS platform directly against Washington.

Why does the ordering of border issues differ in the two statements?

1. India’s priority: Peace and tranquility in the border areas takes up the bulk of the Indian statement. The text asks both sides to observe existing agreements and understandings on border related issues.
2. China’s priority: The Chinese statement mentions maintaining peace and tranquility in the border areas twice, with less detail than it gives to people to people exchanges and multilateral cooperation.
3. Where the border detail sits instead: The specifics appear in the “Eight Points of Outcomes and Consensus” issued after the 25th round of talks between the two Special Representatives on the boundary question last month.
4. The outcomes are promises rather than settlements: The expert group agreement on an “Early and Substantial Harvest of boundary delimitation and Border Management” has neither a settled definition nor agreed terms of reference. Eg. The proposed meeting on hydrological data sharing and renewal of the relevant memoranda of understanding has been under discussion between the Special Representatives for at least two years.

What is China asking India to do?

1. The dual track formulation: Beijing wants India to advance ties in other areas and on border issues in parallel (the dual track, which removes a border settlement as a precondition for wider cooperation). India moved toward this position after the announcement of completed troop disengagement in 2024.
2. “Eliminate interference”: The term is left undefined in the Chinese statement, so any number of issues can later be raised under it to pressure India.
3. Managing domestic opinion: China expects India to “effectively improve the public opinion base of bilateral relations”. In practice that asks India to restrain critics of Chinese policy and sceptics of the current thaw.
4. Taiwan and Tibet inserted: The Chinese statement refers explicitly to India’s “policies and positions on Taiwan and Tibet”. Those references are absent from the Indian statement.
5. The asymmetry in specificity: Both statements describe what good bilateral ties should look like. Only the Chinese text is specific about what the other side ought to do.

Why is the Chinese commitment conditional?

1. The insurance clause: The Chinese statement calls the view of the two countries as “partners rather than adversaries” a “strategic judgment based on the stage of development and the international environment of the two countries”.
2. What the clause reserves: A judgment tied to circumstances can be revised when those circumstances change, so the framing states a condition rather than a settled position.
3. The domestic driver: A difficult economic situation at home makes stability in ties with both India and the United States useful to Beijing at present.
4. The political calendar: The run up to the 21st National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a year away, is the more significant driver of that need for stability.
5. Keeping India and the United States apart: Stability with each is combined with mechanisms such as BRICS that work to keep the two from converging.

Challenges to the India and China thaw

1. Disengagement is not de escalation: Troop disengagement at friction points leaves large forward deployments and new infrastructure in place, so the risk of a fresh standoff is unchanged. Eg. The 2020 Galwan Valley clash in eastern Ladakh followed a build up along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that no existing agreement had reversed.
   The Fix: Convert the expert group’s boundary delimitation talks into a dated work programme with agreed terms of reference, so a promise becomes a schedule.
2. The boundary itself remains unclarified: The LAC has never been mutually agreed on maps, so each side patrols to its own claim and contact is built into routine patrolling. Eg. The exchange of maps under the confidence building framework stalled after the middle sector in the early 2000s.
   The Fix: Resume sector by sector clarification of the LAC on maps, beginning with the sectors where patrol overlap is densest.
3. Economic dependence widens as ties warm: A thaw pulled by domestic economic needs increases reliance on Chinese inputs in the sectors India is trying to localise. Eg. Indian pharmaceutical production depends heavily on Chinese active pharmaceutical ingredients and key starting materials.
   The Fix: Tie each relaxation in trade and investment screening to a measurable substitution target in the dependent sector.
4. Water data sharing rests on lapsing instruments: Hydrological data on the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej flows through memoranda that expire and must be renewed, so flood season information becomes a bargaining chip. Eg. Data was not supplied to India during the 2017 Doklam standoff.
   The Fix: Replace the renewable memoranda with a standing agreement carrying automatic renewal and a fixed transmission schedule.
5. Third country questions are imported into the bilateral: Raising Taiwan and Tibet in a bilateral readout converts India’s positions on those questions into bargaining material. Eg. China’s protests over Indian leaders visiting Arunachal Pradesh follow the same pattern.
   The Fix: Keep India’s stated positions on Taiwan and Tibet out of bilateral outcome documents, and record any divergence separately.

Conclusion

The Chinese text reads as a message to Washington delivered through a bilateral meeting in New Delhi. The Indian text reads as a bilateral document, and that gap is the thing to hold on to. Beijing has attached its own condition to the relationship by describing partnership as a judgment about circumstances rather than as a settled view. The markers to watch are the Chinese President’s visit to the United States and China’s own political calendar, since those are the circumstances the formulation reserves the right to respond to.

About India and China relations

1. The disputed boundary: India and China share a boundary of about 3,488 km across the western, middle and eastern sectors, and it has never been mutually delineated.
2. The agreements that hold it: The Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control, 1993 and the Agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field, 1996 are the base instruments governing conduct along the boundary.
3. The trade asymmetry: China is among India’s largest trading partners, and India runs its single largest bilateral trade deficit with China.
4. Overlapping memberships: The two sit together in BRICS, the SCO and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), so cooperation and contestation run through the same institutions.

Back2Basics: the Special Representatives mechanism on the boundary question

1. When it was set up: The mechanism was established in 2003 to explore a settlement of the boundary question from the political perspective of the overall bilateral relationship.
2. Who holds the posts: India is represented by the National Security Adviser and China by its Foreign Minister.
3. What it produced: The Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India China Boundary Question, 2005 was concluded under this mechanism.
4. The three stage design: The talks were framed to move from agreed political parameters, to a framework for settlement, and then to delineation on maps and on the ground.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2024, GS2, 10] The West is fostering India as an alternative to reduce dependence on China’s supply chain and as a strategic ally to counter China’s political and economic dominance.’ Explain this statement with examples.”

Why in the News

The United States has sanctioned four companies based in India and three Indian nationals over alleged trade in Iranian oil and petrochemicals. Iran has separately listed an LNG carrier serving India and an Indian flagged bulk carrier for possible fines, detention or confiscation in the Strait of Hormuz. One order travels through bank wires and the other waits at sea. The US Congress has also passed a sanctions Bill authorising the President to impose tariffs as a form of economic coercion. The tension is that foreign pressure now arrives as one connected system running from a listing to a payment to a berth, while India’s answer is assembled after the fact from separate Ministries.

What is weaponised interdependence?

1. The mechanism: Whoever controls a network that others depend on can exert pressure on them through it, because withdrawal of access costs the dependent party more than the dispute is worth.
2. Where India sits in that network: An Indian company may need an American bank for payment, a foreign insurer for its ship and safe passage through a strait that another state can disrupt.
3. Secondary sanctions: These instruct a foreign business to abandon a targeted transaction or risk losing access to American finance. The instruction operates on a business that is not itself in the sanctioning country’s jurisdiction.

How have sanctions widened from the seller to the whole transaction?

1. Sectoral widening: The US widened the secondary sanctions threat under Operation Economic Outcast across five Iranian sectors: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping.
2. Reaching a bank with an Indian branch: Washington imposed Iran related sanctions on Russia’s VTB Bank, which has a Delhi branch. Banks dealing with it face sanctions risk even where the transaction is permitted under Indian law.
3. Export controls on third country suppliers: Sanctions against Russia widened after 2022, and export controls began pursuing foreign suppliers of chips and machine tools.
4. The whole oil chain: Oil restrictions reached tankers, insurers, ship managers and traders, so the measure followed the transaction rather than stopping with the seller.
5. Tariffs as a sanctions instrument: Indian exports to the US could face tariffs of up to 100 percent over India’s purchases of Russian oil. The Indian government is monitoring developments and has said it will work with industry to protect India’s trade and economic interests.

How is Iran turning the Strait of Hormuz into a second chokepoint?

1. The non compliance list: Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority published a list of 45 vessels it called non compliant, and the list had grown to 77 within three weeks.
2. Indian linked vessels named: The list included Disha, chartered by Petronet LNG and managed by the Shipping Corporation of India. It also included Maha Roos, an Indian flagged bulk carrier.
3. No stated grounds: The authority did not explain the alleged breaches behind any listing.
4. Insurance as the pressure point: The authority warned insurers against covering the listed ships, which removes a vessel’s ability to trade without touching it physically.
5. The trap for a shipowner: Washington has already sanctioned the authority and warned that seeking passage guarantees from it could carry sanctions risk, even where no payment is made.

Why does India’s sanctions response have no single owner?

1. Split jurisdiction: Diplomacy, law, banking, trade, shipping and fuel supplies sit in different parts of government. No Ministry can see the whole chain on its own.
2. The chain ends in the domestic economy: Economic coercion ties foreign policy directly to household consumption, and its consequences reach households, farmers and seafarers.
3. Crisis coordination already exists: During the current West Asia crisis the government coordinated Ministries, monitored vessels and supplies, raised LPG production and found alternative cargoes. It kept pumps open and kitchens supplied.
4. That coordination is temporary: The arrangement was assembled for one emergency and has no institutional form that outlasts it.

What do the European and Chinese responses show about the limits of legal defiance?

1. European Union, the Blocking Statute: Europe answered American laws of the 1990s that threatened foreign companies with penalties for conduct abroad by enacting a Blocking Statute.
2. What the Blocking Statute could not do: Several European companies withdrew from Iran when secondary sanctions returned in 2018, despite holding legal protection at home. The possible loss of access to American banking and dollar payments choked off trade that remained lawful in Europe.
3. China, an instruction not to comply: Beijing told Chinese businesses not to recognise, enforce or comply with American sanctions against five Chinese refining companies. China has said the American measures had no basis in international law or authorisation from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
4. Why China can hold that line: Its market power, state directed economy and leverage over critical supply chains give it room to resist that India does not have.
5. India’s stated position: India upholds sanctions mandated by the UNSC and does not accept unilateral sanctions.
6. Why the Chinese route is costly for India: India’s financial and commercial ties with the US make that approach expensive, and a legal objection alone offers no comfort if Indian firms still bear the cost.

What would an Economic Security and Sanctions Office do?

1. Location and composition: A permanent office under the Cabinet Secretariat would bring together officials responsible for foreign policy, finance, commerce, energy, shipping, law and defence. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the market regulators would sit in it alongside them.
2. Mapping the failure points: Its staff would track where a transaction could fail, from payment and insurance through to shipping and delivery.
3. Contesting listings: It would seek the evidence behind foreign listings and support legitimate requests for removal.
4. Negotiating relief: It would negotiate written exemptions and transition periods and issue clear Indian guidance on what is prohibited.
5. Separating law from caution: Banks would be required to distinguish a legal prohibition from their own commercial caution before refusing a payment.
6. Early warning to firms: Companies would be told in advance when a payment route, an insurer or a port is at risk.

What capacity does India need alongside coordination?

1. Fuel storage: More LPG storage is needed, so a supply interruption does not immediately reach kitchens.
2. Indian controlled shipping: An expanded Indian controlled tanker fleet reduces reliance on foreign owners who can be pressured by a third country.
3. Marine insurance: A stronger Bharat Maritime Insurance Pool gives Indian cargo an alternative when foreign insurers withdraw cover.
4. Contracting around the chokepoint: Long term LNG contracts sourced outside Hormuz reduce the volume exposed to a single strait.
5. Rupee settlement and its limit: Rupee settlement can preserve lawful trade where the seller accepts it. It cannot shield a bank that still needs access to New York.

Challenges to an Economic Security and Sanctions Office

1. A coordinating body without statutory teeth: An office under the Cabinet Secretariat can convene Ministries but cannot override a line Ministry’s own statutory decision. Eg. The National Security Council Secretariat coordinates across Ministries without displacing their individual powers.
   The Fix: Write its mandate into the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules, 1961, so its guidance binds the participating Ministries.
2. Banks overcomply to protect correspondent access: A bank will refuse a lawful transaction rather than risk its dollar clearing relationship, and no guidance note reverses that calculation. Eg. Payment routes for Russian crude shifted repeatedly to third country banks and intermediaries after 2022.
   The Fix: Create a formal channel for an Indian bank to obtain a written comfort opinion before it declines a lawful payment.
3. Foreign listings arrive without evidence: A designating authority often publishes no grounds, so a listed Indian entity has nothing to rebut. Eg. The vessel list issued by Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority carried no explanation of the alleged breaches.
   The Fix: Open a delisting case file for every listed Indian entity and route it through one named office rather than through whichever Ministry is approached.
4. Seafarers carry the personal cost: Crew on a listed or detained vessel face wage loss, prolonged detention and abandonment far from home. Eg. Indian nationals crew a large share of the merchant vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
   The Fix: Extend consular support, legal representation and wage protection to Indian seafarers on any vessel named by a foreign authority.
5. Physical capacity cannot be built inside a crisis: Storage, tankers and insurance capacity take years to create and cannot be summoned once a chokepoint closes. Eg. Long term LNG supply contracts run for a decade or more and cannot be re sourced at short notice.
   The Fix: Set dated targets for storage, fleet and insurance pool capacity and review them annually against a standing map of coercion risk.

Conclusion

Sanctions have stopped being a question of diplomatic position and become an operational one, because the pressure lands on a payment, an insurance policy or a berth rather than on a statement. India cannot move the chokepoints it depends on, so the variable it does control is whether a decision is taken with the whole journey in view. The unresolved part is authority: a coordinating office can map the exposure, but the Ministry that owns the decision still owns the cost of it. Whether the coordination improvised for the current emergency is given a permanent institutional home is the marker to watch.

Back2Basics: Security Council sanctions and unilateral sanctions

1. Security Council sanctions: The United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which provides for measures not involving the use of armed force.
2. Their binding force: Member States are obliged to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council under Article 25 of the Charter.
3. Unilateral or autonomous sanctions: These are imposed by a single state or a regional bloc outside the Security Council, and they place no legal obligation on any other state.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2018, GS2, 15] In what ways would the ongoing US-Iran Nuclear Pact Controversy affect the national interest of India? How should India respond to this situation?”

Why in the News

Pakistan and Kuwait signed a defence cooperation agreement on 27 August 2026, the latest step in a rapidly expanding Pakistani strategic footprint in West Asia. It follows the Makkah Agreement of 7 August, under which Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan agreed that an armed attack against one member would be regarded as an attack against all. Pakistan has also acted recently as an intermediary between Iran and the United States. What is new is not Pakistani involvement in West Asia, which is decades old, but its institutionalisation into standing commitments with a secretariat behind them. The contest is over what those commitments actually buy: strategic depth against India, or an overstretch that ties Pakistan into rivalries it cannot control.

What is the Makkah Agreement?

1. Signatories and the collective defence clause: Signed on 7 August among Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan, it stipulates that an armed attack against one member would be regarded as an attack against all.
2. The permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia: At a meeting in Istanbul on 31 August, the three countries’ Foreign and Defence Ministers and military chiefs decided to establish a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia.
3. The Secretary General post: A Pakistani will serve as its first Secretary General for three years.
4. Interoperability and defence industrial cooperation: The three agreed to strengthen military interoperability and to pursue defence industrial cooperation, including joint technology development and production.

What are the historical roots of Pakistan’s West Asian orientation?

1. A dual identity from the start: From its inception Pakistan attempted to combine its South Asian geopolitical identity with that of a major Muslim power.
2. The Cold War architecture: Pakistan, Iran and Türkiye were linked through the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and subsequently through the Regional Cooperation for Development.
3. The 1971 defeat as the turning point: Pakistan’s defeat and dismemberment in 1971 pushed it towards the Arab world, as it sought to compensate for its diminished position in South Asia by emphasising its Islamic identity.
4. The Lahore Islamic summit of 1974: The Islamic summit held in Lahore in 1974 marked the reorientation, and Pakistan simultaneously developed extensive military relationships with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies.

What contradictions does the new arrangement already face?

1. Houthi attacks as the first test: Renewed Houthi missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia created the first serious test of the Makkah pact.
2. The Houthis have improved their position at sea: Their capture of Mocha port and Perim island has added to their capability to choke off Saudi shipping through the Bab al-Mandab.
3. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz: With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed by Iran, a frustrated Saudi Arabia may relaunch a full scale war against the Houthis.
4. The collective defence clause dilemma: Such a war would create a major dilemma for Pakistan if Riyadh decided to invoke the collective defence provision of the Makkah agreement.
5. Pakistan is holding five roles at once: It wants to be Saudi Arabia’s security partner, Türkiye’s strategic ally, Iran’s friend and interlocutor, Washington’s useful intermediary and a security provider to the Gulf monarchies, and these roles are compatible only when regional tensions are manageable.

What does the westward turn give Pakistan against India?

1. Defence in depth through a security network: A Pakistan embedded in a web of West Asian security relationships may acquire defence in depth.
2. Saudi finance, Turkish technology and Gulf access: Saudi financial resources, Turkish defence technology and Pakistan’s expanding relationships with Gulf militaries can in theory increase Islamabad’s resilience in a confrontation with India.
3. Türkiye’s position on Kashmir: Türkiye is Pakistan’s most vocal major supporter on Kashmir.
4. Pakistan’s nuclear status as currency: Pakistan’s nuclear status enhances its strategic value to Arab states concerned about an unstable regional order created by a nuclear armed Israel’s policies.

Why could the same turn weaken Pakistan against India?

1. Pakistan’s India centric security establishment: Pakistan’s security establishment has historically concentrated overwhelmingly on India.
2. The new commitments pull resources away: Diplomatic, military and intelligence resources now have to be devoted to Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Yemen and the Red Sea, leaving fewer to concentrate on India.
3. Entanglement is the price of entry: The deeper Pakistan becomes embedded in West Asian security arrangements, the harder it becomes to remain aloof from the region’s conflicts.
4. The Riyadh versus Tehran choice: If the Houthi Saudi confrontation escalates, Islamabad may have to choose between honouring the credibility of its collective defence commitments and maintaining its relationship with Tehran, the Houthis’ principal ally.

How should India read it?

1. Exposure that comes with the new role: Pakistan’s growing West Asian role should not be interpreted in purely negative terms, because the same relationships expose it to some of the world’s most combustible rivalries.
2. The Gulf states have their own stake in India: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the other Gulf states hold major economic and strategic relationships with India that they are unlikely to sacrifice for Pakistan.
3. India’s response, deeper Gulf engagement: New Delhi should continue deepening those relationships as the counter to Pakistan’s expanding footprint in West Asia.

Challenges to the Makkah Agreement

1. A collective defence clause invites the very conflict it deters: A guarantee that is credible draws its guarantor into wars it did not choose, and a guarantee that is not credible is worthless. Eg. The pact’s first test arrived within weeks, through Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia.
   The Fix: Define the triggering threshold in writing, naming what constitutes an armed attack and what response is owed, so the guarantee is bounded rather than open ended.
2. The three signatories do not share an adversary: Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan each face different threats, and a pact without a common opponent has no agreed contingency to plan against. Eg. Türkiye’s principal security concerns lie in the eastern Mediterranean and northern Syria, not in the Red Sea.
   The Fix: Restrict joint planning to the functional areas already agreed, meaning interoperability and defence industrial production, rather than to a shared war plan that does not exist.
3. A permanent secretariat does not create a command: Standing staff can coordinate procurement and exercises, and none of that generates a force able to act on the clause. Eg. The secretariat’s first Secretary General holds a three year term with no operational forces assigned to the arrangement.
   The Fix: Establish a standing combined planning cell with earmarked national units, so the commitment has a force attached to it rather than an office.
4. Pakistan’s fiscal position limits what it can actually provide: A security guarantor needs sustained defence spending, and Pakistan’s is constrained by repeated recourse to external financing. Eg. Pakistan has been a recurring borrower from the International Monetary Fund across successive programmes.
   The Fix: Convert the arrangement’s defence industrial pillar into Saudi and Turkish funded production inside Pakistan, so the commitment generates revenue rather than consuming it.
5. The arrangement cuts across Pakistan’s Iran relationship: A pact aimed at protecting Saudi Arabia from an Iran aligned force is difficult to reconcile with an intermediary role between Tehran and Washington. Eg. Pakistan shares a long land border with Iran, across which both states have previously conducted strikes.
   The Fix: Keep the intermediary role at the level of the Foreign Ministry and separate from the pact’s military structures, so one function does not discredit the other.

Conclusion

The institutional step taken in August converts a long standing set of bilateral military relationships into a commitment Pakistan can be called on to honour, at a moment when the region is already at war. That is a different proposition from the financial and manpower arrangements it has run with the Gulf for fifty years, because those could be scaled back quietly and a collective defence clause cannot. For India the reading should be neither alarm nor relief, since the same arrangement that adds to Pakistan’s depth also adds to the claims on its attention. The marker to watch is whether Riyadh invokes the clause against the Houthis, because that is the point at which the commitment stops being a document.

West Asia in India’s Foreign Policy

1. Evolution of India’s West Asia policy: Guided after Independence by non alignment and a pro Arab position, it moved to full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, a Look West launch in 2005 centred on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and a Think West approach from 2014 extending to maritime security, counter terrorism and investment.
2. The energy dependence: The region supplies nearly 60% of India’s crude and about 70% of its liquefied petroleum gas and liquefied natural gas needs.
3. The economic weight: India GCC bilateral trade stood at $178 billion in FY 2024-25, making the GCC India’s largest trading partner bloc, and the region contributes about 38% of India’s global remittances.
4. The human stake: A diaspora of about 10 million people works across the region, which makes West Asian stability a domestic political question in India.

Back2Basics: Central Treaty Organization

1. CENTO’s origin as the Baghdad Pact: A Cold War defence pact, originally the Baghdad Pact of 1955, renamed CENTO after Iraq withdrew in 1959.
2. Membership: Its members were Iran, Türkiye, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, with the United States as an associate rather than a full member.
3. Purpose, containment of Soviet expansion: It was built to contain Soviet expansion along its southern periphery, linking the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
4. Dissolution in 1979: It dissolved in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution, and Pakistan’s withdrawal followed.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”