Indo Pak's Gamble on the New World Order

A few weeks after Pakistan’s nuclear-powered Prime Minister signed a defence pact with Saudi Arabia and secured arms agreements with Turkey, Qatar, Sudan, Indonesia, and Libya, India moved into the UAE and signed trade and defence agreements.

- BY NILANTHA ILANGAMUWA

India-made Tejas fighter jet aircraft which crashed at the Dubai Air Show last November

Separately, it signed what it calls the “deal of the century” with the European Union, inviting Ursula von der Leyen as Chief Guest for its 77th Republic Day celebration. While Tejas crashed at the Dubai Expo last year, providing Pakistan critics with easy ridicule, India nonetheless advanced its agenda, signing multi-billion-dollar trade and defence agreements and preparing for a high-profile visit to Israel by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.While headlines paint these moves as strategic triumphs, beneath the surface lies a volatile struggle: two nuclear-armed neighbours attempting to draw their own Laksmana Rekha (the line drawn on the soil to protect Sita by Lashmana in the Ramayana) by for a new world order, risking chaos with consequences well beyond South Asia.