IndiaRising
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Banning huawei or significantly raising import duties on chinese products is need of the hour tooThe main thread connecting every single event following Feb 14 has been Modi's re-election, a textbook brinkmanship. Pakistan did Pulwama to weaken Modi's electoral prospects. India apparently de-escalated from its Feb 28 position because it got assurances from the US, UK, and France that they'd do something different this time in getting JeM on the UNSC-1267 list. Those three countries probably gambled at the time that if they just focused on delivering on their "sweetener" (return of PoW), domestic pressure on Modi and Modi's own political will, would buckle under the weight of elections by the time the 1267 amendment came up for vote at the UNSC mid-March.
Now we are back to February 28, and the pressure is back on Modi to make sure he delivers on an electoral promise to get JeM to book. Getting JeM on to UNSC-1267 would have gone a long way, as it would have been a huge diplomatic victory, and he would have virtually closed the case on Pulwama to focus on the elections. He will now either have to escalate and push South Asia to the 99th percentile of Nuclear War and drag world powers back to the table, or suffer a catastrophic foreign policy failure by not delivering on his "decisive battle against terror" promise, which will come with electoral costs. Pulwama itself may have been avenged by the Balakot strikes, but Pakis entering our airspace in broad daylight despite Su-30MKI CAPs, and dropping bombs with the intent to harm Indian military installations, remains an unanswered provocation that was an escalation.