By
Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President(Rtd)
Former Press Minister at Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former MD, SRBC
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.
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