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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews The Jackal Speaks: From his jail cell, terrorist Carlos the Jackal tells of his plan to nuke France
The Jackal Speaks (BBC4) As romantic gestures go, none could be more dramatic. When Carlos the Jackal's girlfriend, terrorist Magdalena Kopp, was jailed, he threatened to blow up nuclear power stations until she was released. To convince the French authorities this was no hoax, he sent a letter signed with his own fingerprint. At the time, in 1982, he was the world's most wanted man, with a rocket attack at Orly Airport in Paris among his long tally of crimes. At first, the French refused to negotiate, even after Carlos bombed a train and a newspaper office. But when they realised that his private terror network — funded by huge paydays from Libya's Colonel Gaddafi and other Arab dictators — really could destroy an atomic reactor, they caved in. Kopp, a former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang, was freed. Shortly after that, she married Carlos in Lebanon. 'I could have killed 100,000 people, irradiated half the country,' he boasted, in The Jackal Speaks. It's the sort of fantastical coup that Eddie Redmayne, as an international hitman in Sky Atlantic's thriller The Day Of The Jackal, might pull off. This documentary, produced by an Israeli company, set out to debunk the myths around the Jackal, now 75 and a prisoner in a French jail for the past 30 years. It made much of his vanity, his alcoholism and his slow slide into irrelevance as the fad for Communist revolutions died out. But it forgot that Carlos — whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez — is still a global hero and a revered freedom fighter . . . in his own mind. This 90-minute film was based around phone interviews taped with the assassin from his cell in solitary confinement. Experts including Carlos's biographer Dr Daniela Richterova and his former controller in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Bassam Abu Sharif, gave their analysis of his personality: narcissistic, reckless, pleasure-loving, needy for praise and attention. The problem is, if you allow a man like that to tell his own life story, he will talk about all the wrong bits. Carlos isn't interested in discussing how he planned his kills: the logistics seem to bore him. And he certainly doesn't care about the dozens of people he killed — their lives are meaningless to him. Instead, there was a lot of boasting: 'I was the best shot, I shot better than anybody else.' And he spent a long time reminiscing about his parents and his childhood in Caracas, Venezuela. It was half an hour before we heard about the first assassination attempt, when he walked into a house in St John's Wood, London, and shot the chairman of M&S, Joseph Sieff, in the face. Incredibly, Sieff — who was also vice president of the British Zionist Federation, survived. The bullet was deflected by his teeth. 'Good advert for the Milk Marketing Board,' he joked. Now there's a line that belongs in a thriller.
The Independent
27-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
North Korea says Donald Trump's Golden Dome plan threatens ‘outer space nuclear war'
In a memorandum issued by the foreign ministry's Institute for American Studies, North Korea described the plans as a "threatening initiative", not a defensive measure, aimed at securing military superiority and threatening nuclear-armed adversaries, according to state media KCNA. The Golden Dome plan"is a typical product of ' America first', the height of self-righteousness, arrogance, high-handed and arbitrary practice, and is an outer space nuclear war scenario," it said, urging the international community to speak out against the plan. Seven days after his inauguration in January, Mr Trump issued the ' Iron Dome for America ' executive order to create a cutting-edge defence system that protects the US from long-range missile attacks. Last week he revealed that his administration has settled on a design for the system, which he said will be operational within three years. The president appointed Michael Guetlein, the current vice chief of space operations, to lead the project. The project has been estimated to cost $175bn to the US, and the Congressional Budget Office earlier this month estimated that it could go up to between $161bn and $542bn over two decades. The North Korean memorandum called it 'the largest arms buildup plan in history', and said it threatened the global security environment. North Korea said US has been 'hell-bent on the moves to militarise outer space' after previously defining outer space as a battlefield in the future. 'The US plan for building a new missile defence system is the root cause of sparking off a global nuclear and space arms race by stimulating the security concerns of nuclear weapons states and turning outer space into a potential nuclear war field,' it added. It argued that the US's continued trilateral military cooperation with its allies Japan and South Korea is an effort to use them as 'cannon fodder and bullet shields to pursue its own interests'. 'We resolutely oppose the United States' criminal ambition to use outer space for hegemonic purposes,' it added. 'We will continue to exercise our sovereign right to defend our strategic security interests and ensure regional peace and security.' North Korea's criticism of the US missile defence initiative comes amid its own expanding nuclear weapons programme, with Pyongyang continuing to carry out hundreds of missile tests in open defiance of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. Despite international sanctions, including a 2006 UN Security Council order banning its development of nuclear weapons and related activities, North Korea has tested multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). In October 2024, North Korea conducted its latest test of its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile, recording the longest flight in the process. The slew of frequent missile tests has prompted the US, South Korea and Japan to boost their military cooperation, including annual joint defence drills in the Korean peninsula. China last week said it was also "seriously concerned" about the Golden Dome project and called for Washington to abandon its development.
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Fiona Hill: Trump is terrified of Putin, I've seen it first hand
It could of course have been pure coincidence that when Vladimir Putin unveiled Russia's first hypersonic missile to the world, he did so with a simulation of the weapon plummeting into an unnamed peninsula bearing an uncanny resemblance to Florida. The similarity was not lost on Donald Trump whose face whitened as he watched on, presumably with visions of his beloved Mar-a-Lago resort reduced to an atomic wasteland, flashing before his eyes. Standing next to him on that day in March 2018 was Fiona Hill, the president's Russia tsar at the time. 'That got Trump's attention,' she said. 'Trump was like, 'Why did he do that? Real countries don't have to do that.'' For Hill, a long-term Kremlin watcher who once sat so close to Putin at dinner she could smell the detergent used to launder his clothes, the episode revealed much about how Mr Trump views the Russian leader. 'He is deferential towards Putin because he really is worried about the risk of a nuclear exchange,' she said. The threat of impending nuclear fallout shaped Hill's early life. Born in County Durham in the 1960s, the daughter of a coalminer and a midwife, she was inspired to study Russian following the war scare of 1983, setting her on an extraordinary trajectory that propelled her all the way 'from the coal house to the White House'. She settled on St Andrews University, after a failed interview at Oxford where posh students mocked her for her working-class northern accent. From there she moved to Russia then America, where she met her husband at Harvard, before going on to serve as an intelligence analyst for successive administrations – first for George Bush, then Barack Obama – and finally on the national security council of Mr Trump. Yet unlike the US president, whom she said remains trapped in a 1980s mindset, both in his foreign policy approach and his musical tastes (see his penchant for YMCA), Hill is at pains to stress that the biggest global threat is no longer a nuclear strike, but more clandestine methods of warfare. 'It's not the likelihood of a Russian tank coming across the Suffolk Downs or a nuclear weapon taking out Sheffield,' she said, speaking over Zoom from her office in Washington DC. 'Now it's much more about critical national infrastructure and acts of sabotage, poisonings and assassinations.' That is not to say she believes the world is a safer place today. Far from it. In fact, she believes World War Three is upon us. 'World wars are when you have global sets of conflicts that become intertwined,' she said. 'That's where we are.' Having spent decades in the US capital quietly blowing the whistle on Russian aggression, Hill was thrust into a media firestorm when she testified at Mr Trump's first impeachment trial in 2019. Her testimony, delivered in her lilting Durham cadence, exposed vulnerability to Russian meddling at the heart of the White House – and caused her inbox to fill up with plaudits and death threats in equal quantities. She has since released a memoir, There is Nothing Here for You, recalling her father's advice that spurred her on a dizzying career path to the heights of US geopolitics, been installed as chancellor of Durham University, and was last year appointed by Sir Keir Starmer to lead the UK's forthcoming Strategic Defence Review. Since Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and even more so following Mr Trump's return to the White House, her expertise has been in greater demand than ever. With large chunks of the front lines in stalemate, and Russia on track to reclaim its territory seized by Ukraine in last year's daring counter-offensive, all eyes have turned to Washington. Mr Trump pledged to end the war on 'day one' of his presidency. And as the conflict drags on, the giant question mark hovering over western Europe is how long it will take for the US to make good on its promise. So, when the two presidents shared an 'excellent' phone call on Monday, Hill was uniquely placed to read the tea leaves of the paltry briefings from each side. How did Mr Trump fare? 'Terrible. Let's give him a pass for effort,' she said, matter-of-factly, as if marking the president's report card. A former Harvard researcher who serves as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, an influential foreign policy think tank, Hill is a career academic with the manner of a firm but fair head teacher. 'What Trump is doing is answering the wrong exam question,' Hill added. 'Trump thinks it's just about real estate, about trade and who gets what, be it minerals, land or rare earths,' she explained. What the president doesn't understand is that 'Putin doesn't want a ceasefire'. '[He] wants a neutered Ukraine, not one that is able to withstand military pressure. Everybody sees this, apart from Trump,' she said. Hill has previously said that her straight-talking approach is what earned her a place in Mr Trump's inner circle. Whereas in Britain, she was advised to go to elocution lessons to round-out her vowels, this wasn't a problem in the US, where Mr Trump referred to her as a 'Deep State stiff with a nice accent'. Sexism, however, was a constant, with the president once mistaking her for a secretary. 'In the Trump White House being a woman was something of a liability because I wasn't going to do the Fox News anchor makeover,' she said. Despite her resistance, she did purchase 'a whole array of dresses' ('I got them in flash sales') to camouflage herself. 'For women, it's very important to not look, in his view, 'doudy',' she said. 'It was just this obsession with how you looked which became very bothersome, because if you didn't look the part, you couldn't impart the information.' After his call with Putin, Mr Trump floated the possibility of a 'large-scale trade' deal. Putin, in turn, offered syrupy platitudes about negotiations being 'on the right track' and the prospect of a 'memorandum of understanding'. But one cannot help but detect a growing sense of desperation in the US president's boosterism. After all, the phone call was only ever a last-minute stand-in for the headline act: direct talks between Zelensky and Putin. The Ukrainian leader had called Putin's bluff, inviting him to a face-to-face meeting in Turkey that the Russian president dropped out of. Mercifully, the Trumpometer appears to have swung in recent months from open hostility towards Ukraine, culminating in the infamous Oval Office shake-down, towards more conventional mistrust of Moscow – thanks in no small part to a lucrative minerals deal signed with Kyiv and a tete-a-tete with Mr Zelensky beneath the vaulting dome of St Peter's Basilica. Putin's no-show, despite proposing the talks himself, was the latest in a string of empty promises to work with the US towards a ceasefire. The US president has so far resisted hitting Putin with further sanctions, instead offering a deal which Hill said provides a 'great incentive for the Russians to play along with Trump'. 'If you offer the Russians a carrot, they just eat it, or they take it and hit you over the head with it,' she said. 'The entourage, the circle around Putin, have enriched themselves so much by availing themselves of all the goodies that the state can provide, what is it that Trump can give them that they don't already have?' Hill is well-versed in the hard ball tactics of Russian negotiators (and the difficulties of corralling Mr Trump). Indeed, she helped prepare the US team for 2018 talks with Russia in Helsinki – where she was forced to call on the Finnish prime minister for help, imploring him to advise Mr Trump about how to engage with Putin after the president ignored his own advisers. Putin, who has maintained the same 'tight team' of top diplomats around him for the past 25 years, dispatched his Stanford-educated economic adviser Kirill Dmitriev, former ambassador to Washington Yuri Ushakov, and Sergei Lavrov, his comic villain foreign minister, to recent talks in Saudi Arabia. 'These guys are really skilled diplomats. They all speak absolutely excellent English,' said Hill. 'They can talk the hind leg off a donkey. They can turn you around in circles. They've got an answer for everything.' Batting for the US are Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, Mike Waltz, Mr Trump's erstwhile national security adviser, and his special envoy Steve Witkoff, a former real estate dealer. Between them, they have less than a year's-worth of cabinet-level experience. So, what does the dancing Russian bear make of these three cotillion debutantes? 'They're eating the neophytes on the US side for dinner,' said Hill. Mr Witkoff, the president's long-term golf buddy, comes in for particular scorn from Hill. Touted as a 'killer' by the president, real estate billionaire Mr Witkoff appeared to forget the names of the Ukrainian territories that he was negotiating with Russia over during a recent episode of Tucker Carlson's podcast. Having driven around the streets of 1980s Harlem looking for houses to flip in a former life, he has traded in his real estate licence for criss-crossing the globe to negotiate hostage deals and ceasefires on behalf of the US government. 'Witkoff's probably thinking about condos in Moscow,' said Hill. 'They think it's really tough being in Queens,' she added. 'It's not as tough as trying to do business in Russia, where people have a propensity to fall out of poorly sealed and easily opened windows from high buildings.' In her line of work, Hill is all too aware of the dangers of dealing with malign governments in the near east. She fell violently ill after being told she was asking too many questions at a meeting with Chechen separatists. She later discovered she had been poisoned. As a member of Mr Trump's security council from 2017 to 2019 , she said the president made it 'very clear' that Ukraine 'must be part of Russia'. 'He really could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state,' she told a New York Times journalist. But what has changed since Mr Trump was last in office, she said, is that he has surrounded himself with 'sycophants and courtiers', with no one pushing back against his more outlandish ideas. During his first term, she said, 'he was a little bit deferential here and there to various people. But now he's so convinced [in his own abilities] that he doesn't pay attention to anyone'. Underpinning Mr Trump's soft approach to Moscow, she believes, is his personal idolisation of Putin, and their joint belief in 'spheres of influence' and 'might makes right'. 'Trump is enthralled by Putin, and as a result becomes in thrall to him,' she said. However, she is equally scathing of European leaders for not coming to terms with this new reality sooner. 'The fact that the Europeans are so shocked by his deference to Putin actually shows that they haven't also done their homework,' she said. Despite European outrage at Mr Trump's repeated threats to withdraw American support for Ukraine, Hill gives credit to the US president for sounding the alarm on the need for Europe to increase its defence spending as far as 2016. 'He's been accurate right from the very beginning', she said, of the need to reach the two per cent of GDP spending on defence target and of ending Europe's energy dependency on Russia's Nordstream pipeline, which, prior to the war in Ukraine, provided more than half of Germany's gas supply. Even on the subject of tariffs, Hill said, there is method in the madness. 'Europe wanted defence and security provisions from the US, but wanted to be an economic competitor,' she said. 'There is an absolute and utter solid basis for why Trump is really pissed off about all of this.' Hill now believes that America turning its back on Ukraine is 'the most likely scenario', yet despite the gloomy picture, she is optimistic that European sanctions can still bear fruit if the bloc can pull together. Although sanctions currently rely heavily on the power of the US treasury to act unilaterally, Hill said collective action between the UK and Europe could be 'pretty powerful', but requires 'a lot more coordination'. One possible avenue, she suggested, would be for Europe to leverage relationships with its major trading partners to encourage them to cut ties with Russia. The Europeans handing an ultimatum to the Chinese, Indians and Iranians if the US withdrew sanctions could provide 'some really significant leverage', she said. 'All these countries that have a vested interest in investing in Europe and doing work with Europe,' she added. 'Maybe you don't do the kind of sanctions that the US does, but Europeans can have very serious conversations.' Talking to Hill is like opening one of the sets of the encyclopaedia Britannica she used to read on the stairs of her small family home as a child. Seamlessly interweaving politics, philosophy and history, she cross-stitches conversation with references to Thomas Hobbes, Jean Monnet and, in a nod to her adoptive homeland, American football. Growing up, her family did not have a telephone, a car or a television and often switched off the electricity to save money. A star pupil, Hill won a scholarship to a private school but did not attend because her family could not afford the uniform or the books. In her memoir, Hill writes at length about how mass job losses in working class communities fuel populism. Yet despite the hardships of her upbringing, she was able to rise to the dizzy heights of American politics – a feat she credits to her parents, her teachers and her local MP. Working in the highest echelons of foreign politics, she was often the only woman in the room. In Russia, this led to her being dismissed, in turns, as a waitress, an aide, and even an upmarket prostitute. But it was also a secret weapon. 'People just forgot you were there and talked as if you were part of the scenery,' she said. 'I'd hear and learn all kinds of things that I never would have done under different circumstances.' When she testified against Mr Trump at his impeachment trial, she was careful about her choice of outfit, opting to dress in deliberately muted tones, so as not to draw attention away from what she was saying. The next day, she earned gushing front page headlines across the US national newspapers, with many marvelling at her accent. She also won a shout out in the Washington Post style section for her 'reassuringly dull' black ensemble. Besides the bouquets of flowers arriving at the door, her daughter, then 12, heard some of the death threats left on the family's voicemail. Hill told her the callers were 'cowards' and said not to worry, but taped up the letterbox in case of letter bombs. 'I'm from the north east of England, I'm not that easily intimidated,' she once said. Hill became a US citizen in 2002 and lives in Washington DC with her husband Kenneth Keen, a business consultant, and their daughter. But she splits her time between the US and the UK. Her mother lives in a care home in Bishop Auckland, near where she grew up, and she has taken on an advisory role to the British government as a leader and co-author of the Strategic Defence Review. So how does life in the White House compare to the Ministry of Defence? 'I always find it quite refreshing in the UK context now, that people just look normal,' she said. 'It didn't feel like I had to be out there choosing my fanciest frock.' The review was meant to report in the first half of 2025, but is expected to be delayed until autumn, much to Hill's frustration ('everyone knows what's in it. It's just the whole politics of finding a time.') Its release has been shrouded in secrecy amid reports that it will recommend protecting critical infrastructure through the creation of a home guard, uncharitably compared to dad's army – Hill dismisses this as 'rubbish'. Hill said she hopes the review will act as a wake up call for Britain and Europeans to understand that a land invasion is not the only threat we face from Moscow. Pointing to recent blackouts in Spain and at Heathrow Airport, she said: 'What we're arguing is the physical front lines in terms of the likelihood of an invasion by Russia may be further away, but the other front lines are here all the time. They're your IT systems, they're your electrical grids, the power stations. 'Every country is massively vulnerable,' she added. 'Ninety per cent of our way of life, everything from you being able to do your orders online for your food, to your ability to function at work would be taken out by a massive strike on all of the power grid.' Working in the weeds of European defence and fighting a losing battle to convince the US to stay engaged is enough to turn anyone into a cynic. Yet despite everything, she remains optimistic that Britain and Europe will step up. 'The UK has absolute potential to play a leadership role at the moment,' she said. Her message for Sir Keir's government? 'Come on then, get a move on. What I worry about is that people are going to be dithering about for too long, because the time for action was yesterday.'
BBC News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Can Trump's pricey 'Golden Dome' missile defence system be done?
Warheads raining down from beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Faster-than-sound cruise missiles striking US infrastructure. Sky-high nuclear are just some of the nightmarish scenarios that experts warn could come true if the US's dated and limited defence systems were overwhelmed in a future high-tech a single, relatively small nuclear detonation hundreds of miles above the heads of Americans would create an electromagnetic pulse - or EMP - that would have apocalyptic results. Planes would fall out of the sky across the country. Everything from handheld electronics and medical devices to water systems would be rendered completely useless."We wouldn't be going back 100 years," said William Fortschen, an author and weapons researcher at Montreat College in North Carolina. "We'd lose it all, and we don't know how to rebuild it. It would be the equivalent of us going back 1,000 years and having to start from scratch."In response to these hypothetical - but experts say quite possible - threats, US President Donald Trump has set his eyes on a "next generation" missile shield: the Golden while many experts agree that building such a system is necessary, its high cost and logistical complexity will make Trump's mission to bolster America's missile defences extremely challenging. An executive order calling for the creation of what was initially termed the "Iron Dome for America" noted that the threat of next-generation weapons has "become more intense and complex" over time, a potentially "catastrophic" scenario for the Bazylczyk, a missile defence expert at the Washington DC-headquartered Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the BBC that existing systems are geared towards intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, such as those used by North Korea. But powerful nations like Russia and China are also investing in newer technologies that could strike not just neighbours, but adversaries an ocean the threats publicly identified by US defence officials are hypersonic weapons able to move faster than the speed of sound and fractional orbital bombardment systems - also called Fobs - that could deliver warheads from - even in limited numbers - are deadly. "The Golden Dome sort of re-orients our missile defence policy towards our great power competitors," Ms Bazylczyk said. "Our adversaries are investing in long-range strike capabilities, including things that aren't your typical missiles that we've been dealing with for years." What will the 'Golden Dome' look like? The White House and defence officials have so far provided few concrete details about what the Golden Dome - which is still in its conceptual stages - would actually look like. Speaking alongside Trump in the Oval Office on 20 May, defence secretary Pete Hegseth said only that the system will have multiple layers "across the land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors".Trump added that the system will be capable of intercepting missiles "even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched in space", with various aspects of the programme based as far afield as Florida, Indiana and previous testimony in Congress, the newly named overseer of the programme, Space Force General Michael Guetlein, said that the Golden Dome will build on existing systems that are largely aimed at traditional ICBMs. A new system would - add multiple layers that could also detect and defend against cruise missiles and other threats, including by intercepting them before they launch or at the various stages of their flight. Currently, the US Missile Defence Agency largely relies on 44 ground-based interceptors based in Alaska and California, designed to combat a limited missile attack. Experts have warned that the existing system is woefully inadequate if the US homeland were to be attacked by Russia and China, each of which has an expanded arsenal of hundreds of ICBMs and thousands of cruise missiles. "[Current systems] were created for North Korea," said Dr Stacie Pettyjohn, a defence expert at the Center for a New American Security. "It could never intercept a big arsenal like Russia's, or even a much smaller one like China's." The Congressional Research Office, or CBO, has said that "hundreds or thousands" of space-based platforms would be necessary to "provide even a minimal defence" against incoming missiles - a potentially enormously expensive proposition. Israel's Iron Dome: an example? Trump first revealed his concept for the Golden Dome during a joint address to Congress in March, when he said that "Israel has it, other places have it, and the United States should have it too".The president was referring to Israel's "Iron Dome" system, which the country has used to intercept rockets and missiles since Iron Dome, however, is designed to intercept shorter-range threats, while two other systems - known as David's Sling and the Arrow - combat larger ballistic missiles such as those that have been fired by Iran and the Houthis in Yemen. Ms Bazylczyk described the Iron Dome as geared towards "lower tier" threats, such as rockets fired from Gaza or southern Lebanon. The Golden Dome would go beyond that, to detect longer range missiles as well, she said. To accomplish that, she said it will need to combine different capabilities. "And I'll be looking out for the command and control system that can weave all of this together," she said, noting that such a thing does not currently exist. Can it be done? Creating that system will be an incredibly complicated - and costly - proposition. In the Oval Office, Trump suggested that the Golden Dome could be completed by the end of his term, with a total cost of $175bn over time, including an initial investment of $25bn already earmarked for it. His estimate is far out of sync with the CBO's, which has put the potential price tag at $542bn over 20 years on the space-based systems alone. Experts have said the total cost could eventually soak up a large chunk of the massive US defence budget. "I think that's unrealistic," said Dr Pettyjohn. "This is complicated, with multiple systems that need to be integrated together. Every one of those steps has its own risks, costs and schedules." "And going fast is going to add more cost and risk," she added. "You're likely to produce something that isn't going to be as thoroughly evaluated... there are going to be failures along the way, and what you produce may need major overhauls." The creation of the Golden Dome has also sparked fears that it may lead to a new "arms race", with US foes gearing up their own efforts to find ways to overwhelm or circumvent its defences. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, for example, told reporters that the plan "heightens the risk of space becoming a battlefield". Those involved in researching worst-case scenarios and US defence policy downplay these concerns. Potential foes, they argue, are already investing heavily in offensive capabilities. "The Golden Dome aims to change the strategic calculus of our adversaries," said Ms Bazylczyk. "Improving homeland air and missile defences reduces the confidence of a potential attacker in achieving whatever objectives they seek.""It raises the threshold for them to engage in this attack," she added. "And it contributes to overall deterrence." Even a partially completed Golden Dome, Mr Fortschen said, could prevent a nightmare scenario from taking place. "I will breathe a lot easier," he said. "We need that type of system. The Golden Dome is the answer."
New York Times
18-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Why There's No Battlefield Solution to India's Perpetual Pakistan Problem
Militarily, India fought Pakistan to little more than a draw this month during their most expansive combat in half a century. Indian forces managed to punch holes in hangars at sensitive Pakistani air bases and leave craters on runways, although only after losing aircraft in aerial face-offs with its longtime adversary. But strategically, the battlefield tossup was a clear setback for India. An aspiring diplomatic and economic power, it now finds itself equated with Pakistan, a smaller, weaker country that Indian officials call a rogue sponsor of terrorism. The four-day clash reminded the world about India's powerlessness to resolve 78 years of conflict with the troubled nation next door. Any act of confrontation plays into the hands of Pakistan, where friction with India has long been a lifeblood. Outright military victory is nearly impossible, given the threat from both countries' nuclear arsenals. 'It's unfortunate that we in India have to waste so much of our time and effort on what is actually a strategic distraction: terror from Pakistan,' said Shivshankar Menon, a former national security adviser in India. 'But it's a fact of life and we might as well manage the problem.' Just how to do that has perplexed Indian leaders from the beginning. Interviews with more than a dozen diplomats, analysts and officials paint a stark picture of India's perpetual dilemma. After multiple wars and several failed attempts at solving their disputes, which have shaped the subcontinent ever since Pakistan and India were cleaved apart in 1947, the problem has only grown in complexity. The spark is now often asymmetric — India struck Pakistan this month after blaming it for a deadly terrorist attack. The risk of rapid escalation has increased as both sides deploy drones and other cutting-edge weapons on a large scale for the first time. And superpower politics have entered the equation in new ways, as the United States offers growing diplomatic and military support to India, and China does so for Pakistan. At the same time, the two countries' leaders have embraced religious nationalism and hardened their views of one another, making any conciliatory gesture all but impossible. The Pakistan Army, the 800-pound gorilla that has long warped the country's politics, has taken this ideological turn as it has extended its de facto rule. In India, the shift to strongman, Hindu-nationalist rule has left it boxed in whenever tensions rise, as the right-wing base of Prime Minister Narendra Modi often calls for blood. That makes it harder to show the kind of restraint that India displayed in 2008, when terrorists killed more than 160 people in Mumbai — and to see that a war, beyond satisfying immediate political needs, could set back India's ascent. The Indian government at that time — Mr. Menon was its highest-ranking diplomat — decided against striking Pakistan. It wanted to keep the global focus on the terrorist attack and to isolate Pakistan for supporting terrorism, rather than elevate it as a battlefield equal. Seventeen years later, terrorists again attacked innocent people, killing more than two dozen Hindu tourists on April 22 in a scenic Kashmir meadow. This time, India responded by striking Pakistan militarily, and the two sides stepped to the brink of all-out war. Indian officials say that they had to send a message that there is a cost to Pakistan's policy of proxy warfare, and that the strikes were part of a larger strategy to squeeze their adversary, including the threat of disrupting the flow of crucial cross-border rivers. Even critics like Mr. Menon say they can see why India had little other choice. An Unshakable Neighbor For years, India and Pakistan have been on vastly different trajectories. As India has grown to become the world's fourth-largest economy, it has been courted by the United States and its allies as a geopolitical partner in counterbalancing China and as an investment destination. American and Indian leaders prefer to talk about an enlarged 'Indo-Pacific' region, including the advanced economies of East Asia, rather than old 'Indo-Pakistan' problems. Today, in India's hierarchy of concerns, 'China looks much larger than Pakistan does,' Jon Finer, a former deputy national security adviser at the White House, said on a panel recently. With Chinese incursions along the countries' Himalayan border and increased competition for regional dominance, the last thing India wants 'is to be bogged down in a conflict with Pakistan while they are figuring things out with China,' he said. But Pakistan — from its birth dwarfed by an outsized army that defined India as the forever enemy to justify its size and influence — always looms in the background. In 1998, years after the Indian economy started pulling ahead of Pakistan's, India made an earthshaking step toward joining the ranks of world powers by staging underground nuclear blasts. Barely two weeks later, Pakistan conducted its own nuclear tests. Suddenly, nuclear deterrence negated India's military advantage. President Bill Clinton soon branded the region 'the most dangerous place in the world.' It was hardly what India had set out to achieve. Instead of being clubbed with China, Russia and the Western powers, India was in a terrifying new quagmire. The nuclear stalemate did not bring peace. Pakistan used its experience of running American-funded Jihadist militias against the Soviets in Afghanistan to expand the asymmetric warfare in its perpetual fight against India. A Tougher Approach Like other Indian leaders before him, Mr. Modi, the country's Hindu-nationalist prime minister, once tried his hand at peace. Still high on his sweeping election victory in 2014, he made a surprise visit to Pakistan the following year, the first by an Indian prime minister in a decade. He had vowed to turn India into a developed country and wanted to see whether he could find a solution on a front that was squandering resources. Nine months later, militants attacked an Indian military base. India blamed groups nurtured by Pakistan. Any talk of peace quickly ended. India's response to that assault began an escalatory pattern of military retaliation that repeated after a similar attack on Indian forces in 2019 and last month's terrorist ambush of civilians. India also entrenched a strategy of punishing Pakistan — freezing talks, isolating the country diplomatically, increasing border security and working covertly to aggravate its domestic vulnerabilities. Ajit Doval, the architect of Mr. Modi's national security doctrine, has said that India's previous governments grew too defensive under the threat of nuclear confrontation. In such a mode, he said, shortly before becoming national security adviser in 2014, 'I can never win — because either I lose, or there is a stalemate.' He proposed a 'defensive offense' approach, essentially mimicking Pakistan's own asymmetric tactics. In recent years, according to analysts and officials, India has waged assassination campaigns to try to take out many of the militants focused on operations against India. The Indian government has also been accused of having a hand in insurgencies that have drained Pakistan's military, particularly the separatist movement in Balochistan Province, bordering Iran and Afghanistan. 'You do one Mumbai, you may lose Balochistan,' Mr. Doval said in 2014. 'There is no nuclear war involved in that. There is no engagement of troops. If you know the tricks, we know the trick better than you.' After the latest hostilities, India has threatened more overt action, saying that any future terrorist attacks will be seen as an act of war — potentially setting up frequent military confrontation as the new norm. But with the specter of nuclear war, what India can achieve through military force is limited. 'Deterrence is subjective and in the eye of the beholder, a mind-reading game,' said Mr. Menon, the former national security adviser. The more practical question, he said, is whether India can reset the incentives that drive the Pakistan Army. The four days of uncontrolled escalation with Pakistan this month became the latest reality check between India's aspirations and its constraints. It has built sufficient diplomatic power, and integrated itself enough into the global economy, to emerge without a major blow to its reputation, Western diplomats in New Delhi said. But 'at some point, India's leaders have to recognize that they can't free themselves of their neighbor and move on and become a global power,' said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. 'You have to have some modus vivendi with each of your neighbors — whether they are your enemies, whether they're your friends, whether they're just there.'
