An intriguing point was raised during an interaction between Indian and Israeli thinkers and analysts recently. It was agreed that India’s main enemy is not Pakistan it is China. Nevertheless, more lives have been lost in India to Pakistani terrorism than to Beijing’s adversarial policy towards Delhi.
It was also agreed that Pakistan is a rogue actor, and although bankrupt and debilitated, it still retains nuisance value. But Operation Sindoor last year showed Pakistan could be more than a nuisance. It delivered a shock in the form of the massacre of 26 Indian tourists in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025.
The killing appears to have had the backing of the Pakistani Army, with no less than Gen Asim Munir waxing eloquent about the “two-nation theory” while addressing overseas Pakistanis six days earlier.
In that sense, could Israel’s current war against Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, be a lesson to other rogue actors and rogue states? In Israeli strategic and security circles, there’s a view that what they are doing today could be emulated by others tomorrow, possibly India.
In fact, they see Pakistan suddenly getting close to the US as a manifestation of its insecurity: what if India decided to decapitate Pakistan’s top brass, all of whom are neck deep with terror groups?
Pakistan misses nothing that is said or done in Washington DC, and Tulsi Gabbard’s recent comments about Islamabad, while addressing the Senate Intelligence Committee, may have left them uneasy.
She said that “Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missile development potentially could include ICBMs with the range capable of striking the homeland.
“Pakistan continues to develop increasingly sophisticated missile technology that provides its military the means to develop missile systems with the capability to strike targets beyond South Asia, and if these trends continue, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles that would threaten the US,” she said.
That the comments were made despite Gen Asim Munir’s three visits to the White House (including a lunch with Donald Trump), suggests an undercurrent. During his first term (2017-21) Trump was hostile to Pakistan, suspending over $1 billion in security aid and accused it of harbouring terrorists.
The warming up in Trump’s second term is therefore welcome and the generals and their chosen politicians lost no time in ingratiating themselves with the new order. But will it last? Or could the US dump them as it has done so in the past?
Recall that after Pakistan facilitated then US President Nixon’s opening to China in 1970, Washington forged ties with Beijing with no further thought of Islamabad.
Again, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the US went home leaving Islamabad to deal with the mess of jihadi terrorists, drugs and arms trafficking that was undermining the Pakistani state.
The situation this time is hardly better. Gen Munir and his Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, preside over an illegitimate political order which saw a rigged election in 2024 and the incarceration of Imran Khan. The country is dependent on Washington nudging the IMF to continue giving them loans.
Khan and Sharif need to ensure their continued relevance for Trump. They need to listen closely and obey. Their survival may depend on that.
In recent years India has demonstrated the capability and willingness to strike at Pakistan’s terror infra. It has also made it clear that the terrorists and their sponsors are fair targets. Both are in Pakistan in plain sight. Of course when talking of terrorists and their sponsors India may not include heads of state. But that hasn’t been clarified.
