Outlining the two-pronged challenge facing New Delhi, the assessment also warned of the risk of an “escalation cycle” between India and Pakistan, arguing that India, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is “more likely in the past to respond with military force to perceived or real Pakistani provocations”.
The brief section on India-Pakistan, however, said that New Delhi and Islamabad “are likely to reinforce the current calm in their relations” following the renewal of a ceasefire by both sides along the Line of Control at all. beginning of 2021, while noting that “Pakistan has a long history of supporting anti-Indian militant groups.”
“Both sides’ perceptions of heightened tensions raise the risk of conflict, with violent unrest in Kashmir or a militant attack in India as potential flashpoints,” the assessment said.
While there was an element of a positive projection regarding India-Pakistan ties, the prognosis regarding China was bleak, both in the case of New Delhi and Washington’s ties with Beijing. The 40-page report noted that previous clashes between China and India have shown that persistent low-level friction at the Line of Effective Control (LAC) has the potential to escalate rapidly.
The fact that India was positioned in a difficult neighborhood was evident in the section of the report on potential interstate conflicts, where apart from a preamble mentioning the war in Ukraine, two of the three clashes deserving “the immediate attention of the United States” they concerned India, with the Azerbaijan-Armenia confrontation the only other mentioned. There was hardly any mention of numerous other conflicts in Asia and Africa.
The assessment was heavy on tensions between China and the United States, with Beijing and Moscow attracting the most attention. There were nearly 100 mentions each of China and Russia, and only five of terrorism, a topic that has animated geopolitical discourse for nearly 30 years.
“The strategic competition between the United States and its allies, China and Russia over what kind of world will emerge makes the coming years key to determining who and what will shape the narrative perhaps most immediately in the context of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, which threaten to escalate into a broader conflict between Russia and the West,” the report said.
In a hearing before a US Senate committee on the report, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said China believes it can achieve its goals of dominating its region and expanding its global reach “only to expenditures of United States power and influence”.
While the intelligence assessment said Beijing is in cahoots with Moscow in an effort to undermine Washington’s global influence, Haines suggested the partnership was opportunistic and did not see them “becoming allies, .. the way we are with allies in NATO.”
“China, which is increasingly challenging the United States economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world, remains our unprecedented priority,” Haines said in his testimony, reflecting the assessment’s emphasis on China.
