There are many ways India could go about dealing with Pakistan strategy wise, but a truly feasible foreign policy for Pakistan is to adopt proven strategies from recent history. India and Pakistan both have atomic weapons and there has only been one successful strategy which has worked on between two Nuclear rivals. For this we must look at the break up of the Soviet Union and what caused it. One of the main factors was the strategy employed by President Reagan during the 1980’s, as he put the U.S. on the path to outspending the Soviet Union and garnering support from the outlying territories which were in desperate need of change. Reagan’s policies were so effective that the Soviet Union simply found itself in a quagmire where it had to start negotiating with the U.S. on level it never imagined even 10 years earlier. For Reagan used both economic strategies and military expansion to make the faults in the Soviet System impossible to overcome. The game became such that, any reform the Soviet Union made only added to it’s problems. India today could employ strategies which would force Pakistan to change it’s behavior towards India. The only real stopping this is India not realizing what cards she actually holds at the moment.
India can clearly outspend Pakistan in military spending, this is different than the relationship the U.S. had with the Soviet Union for much of the 20th Century. Pakistan has come to expect that India can spend more, but it has grown accustomed to being able to count on China and the U.S. giving it aid to negate the effect of this. In the three wars Pakistan has launched against India, Pakistan has always received assistance from the U.S. and later been bailed out by U.S. backed institutions from Bankruptcy. This of course was always expected as the U.S. took over the strategic areas which the British Empire had created. Winston Churchill had pushed for the the Partition of India along the geography which became Pakistan, simply because it was strategic and granted access to inner Asia and would allow the placement of Western military bases there to defend the oil fields of the Middle East and to spy on the Soviet Union. Pakistan has from the beginning of it’s partition from India fulfilled this role for foreign interests, and even with all it’s rhetoric of being founded for Indian Muslims, it has never been their homeland as most stayed in borders of India where they had always been.
Pakistan will not be able to match an India which would be completely self-sufficient in all aspects of weapon production. India also must clearly expand it’s NAVY which today has a complete advantage over Pakistan. This advantage must be expanded to the point of having a clear second attack capability in case of an Atomic attack from Pakistan. This capability will assure that no belligerent moves could be made by Pakistan. It is well within the grasp of India to achieve this with in the next decade. Creating this capability will also help balance the region in relation to China. India also must expand it’s abilities and begin the manufacture of it’s own semi-conductors as this will take a great burden off Indian companies as they could purchase Indian made computer hardware instead of importing from China. India also would than have a competitive advantage over Pakistan, which simply cannot follow through with such ambitions as it lacks the capital and is politically under China and only going to become more so.
India surpassed the the U.K. economy for the first time since 1757.
India must at the same time continue to develop increased relations with Afghanistan. The fact is that India remains a Secular Democratic Force in a neighborhood of where Communist States and strategic partner states have been able to act with aggressive impunity towards India for much of last 70 years. India has only been able to begin to counter this since it’s rise back to historical significance began in the 1970’s.
Prime Minister Modi and Afghani President Ghani
India for many reasons may not desire a breakup of Pakistan, nor a balkanization of the region. Instead, India may inadvertently create greater stability in the region by finally ended the military competition that Pakistan has engaged in since 1947. India is the largest force is South Asia, in terms of military, scientific endeavor and economic size. These attributes must be recognized and used by neighboring nations to for mutual benefit and development. It seems this ultimate condition will not materialize without a great push by India to technologically create such a barrier that it will become obvious that further efforts by Pakistan will simply be a waste of effort. Today, India has economically emerged as a nation which cannot even be compared with Pakistan. India’s infrastructure has also long ago gone far ahead of what Pakistan can compete with. The growth of the Indian economy and it’s potential is no longer compared to Pakistan as was once the case all the way until the the 1980’s. The very competitive advantages India created economically must now be replicated in a uniform defense industry which must be made in India. This shall the next wave of India’s economic emergence as the century continues.
Examples of Recent Indian Scientific achievements.
The Vikram Lander which will land on the Moon in July 2019.
Supersonic Brahmos Missiles.
Tejas Fighter Jet