Three nautical miles may sound like a technical detail in a naval manual. Between two nuclear-armed states, it is the distance between a reckless manoeuvre and a war that no one can be certain of controlling.
According to New Delhi, a Pakistani naval vessel approached a frontline Indian warship at high speed during a routine surveillance mission in the northern Arabian Sea and caused a collision. No lives were lost, and neither vessel suffered major damage. India says the manoeuvre directly violated the 1991 bilateral agreement requiring the naval vessels and submarines of both countries to remain at least three nautical miles apart in international waters. Islamabad has yet to offer a public explanation.
The incident may end with a diplomatic protest, several carefully worded statements, and a temporary silence. India should not allow that to happen. Pakistan’s conduct should not be dismissed as the poor seamanship of a single officer. It fits a familiar pattern: create danger, blur responsibility, deny intent, and then present Pakistan as indispensable to managing the crisis it helped create.
Pakistan did not invent this method, but its security establishment has refined it over decades.
In February 1999, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee travelled to Lahore and signed a declaration intended to open a new chapter between India and Pakistan. Soon afterwards, Pakistani regulars, initially portrayed as independent Kashmiri fighters, occupied positions on the Indian side of the Line of Control in Kargil. While political leaders spoke of peace, the Pakistani military prepared for war. This was not a failure of communication. It was strategic deception.
In November 2008, ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists murdered 166 people in Mumbai. The attackers and their organisers operated from Pakistan. What followed was years of delay, denial, and legal theater around those who enabled the assault. Some individuals were eventually prosecuted when international pressure became difficult to resist, but the ecosystem that made the massacre possible was never fully dismantled. The attack did not emerge from a vacuum. It grew from an environment in which anti-India militants were tolerated, protected or considered useful until they became diplomatically inconvenient.
The same double game shaped the war in Afghanistan. The United States relied on Pakistan for supply routes, intelligence, and access, while elements of Pakistan’s security establishment maintained ties with the Taliban and the Haqqani network. In 2011, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqani network as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. That same year, Osama bin Laden was discovered in Abbottabad, a Pakistani garrison town close to the country’s premier military academy.
The conclusion should have been devastating. If Pakistan’s leadership knew that bin Laden was there, it had deceived its principal counter-terrorism partner on a historic scale. If it did not know, then a state presenting itself as central to the global war on terror had failed to identify the world’s most wanted terrorist in the heart of a military town. Neither explanation supports Pakistan’s claim to be a reliable custodian of regional security.
Its nuclear record is no more reassuring. The proliferation network created by Abdul Qadeer Khan transferred sensitive nuclear knowledge and technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Islamabad treated the affair as the private enterprise of a rogue scientist. Yet a continent-spanning nuclear bazaar could hardly operate for years without raising questions inside a state obsessed with protecting its nuclear programme. Either parts of the establishment enabled it, or the state lost control of its most sensitive assets. Neither possibility is compatible with the image of a responsible nuclear power.
Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and Turkey are not bound by a single treaty, and their interests often diverge. Yet an informal international ecosystem of destabilisation has emerged. Iran arms and finances proxies, then hides behind layers of deniability. North Korea trades in missiles, weapons, and prohibited expertise. Turkey, despite its membership of NATO, gives political legitimacy and space to Hamas figures while treating ideological militancy as a source of leverage. Pakistan has spent decades distinguishing between terrorists who threaten the Pakistani state and militants who can be directed towards India, Afghanistan or other external targets.
These states do not need a joint headquarters to form a global axis of destabilisation. Their common method is enough. Violence is outsourced, responsibility is denied, and the resulting crisis is converted into diplomatic influence.
This criticism is not directed at the people of Pakistan. Pakistani civilians have paid an appalling price for terrorism and extremism. That suffering makes the policy of the security establishment even more indefensible. A state that breeds snakes for its neighbours eventually finds them inside its own house.
Then there is the United States.
Washington can build aircraft, satellites, and intelligence systems that few countries can match. It is far less successful at understanding the political cultures in which it deploys them. American foreign policy repeatedly mistakes temporary usefulness for strategic reliability. It sees a government that can deliver a message or host a meeting and assumes that this makes it a trustworthy partner.
After the attacks of 11 September 2001, Washington poured military assistance and political legitimacy into Pakistan because it needed access to Afghanistan. The fact that Pakistan was playing both sides was treated as an inconvenience rather than a fundamental breach of trust. The United States paid Islamabad to help defeat militant networks that continued to benefit from sanctuary, tolerance, or connections inside Pakistan.
Now Washington has again elevated Pakistan, this time as a mediator between the United States and Iran. Pakistan has hosted talks and helped carry messages in an effort to end the present conflict. The irony is difficult to miss. A state whose most notorious proliferation network assisted Iran and North Korea is being presented as the responsible adult in a geopolitical crisis with a nuclear dimension.
At the same time, the United States approved a package worth approximately 686 million dollars to upgrade and support Pakistan’s F-16 fleet. The familiar justification is counter-terrorism and interoperability with American forces. But a combat aircraft does not read the footnotes attached to a State Department notification before it takes off. From New Delhi, these aircraft form part of the military capability of a nuclear-armed adversary that has repeatedly used regular forces, proxies, and covert pressure against India.
This is not sophisticated statecraft. It is an institutional refusal to admit that the previous calculation failed. Washington arms the arsonist, employs him as a firefighter, and then applauds when the flames briefly subside.
American officials later wonder why friendly countries refuse to place their security entirely in American hands. India remembers how often short-term US priorities have overridden New Delhi’s legitimate security concerns. Israel has learned that American assurances can change with an election, a Congress, or a shift in public mood. Gulf states have discovered that a security umbrella may look impressive at a summit but fail to open when missiles and drones begin to fall.
This is one reason India is right to defend its strategic autonomy. Reliability is not measured by speeches, military exercises, or the number of signed agreements. It is measured when the vital interests of an ally collide with Washington’s immediate convenience.
The Arabian Sea collision should therefore become a practical warning. India must insist on a full investigation, preserve the radar and communications record and share the relevant evidence with trusted partners. The 1991 agreement should be updated for an era of drones, unmanned vessels, electronic warfare, and decisions made in seconds. The two navies need a direct operational hotline, mandatory reporting procedures, and clear rules for unsafe approaches at sea.
Rules alone will not be enough. Paper agreements do not restrain an establishment that has repeatedly used ambiguity as a weapon. India must continue strengthening maritime domain awareness, unmanned surveillance, electronic warfare, precision response, and escalation control. It should deepen cooperation with dependable partners while expanding its indigenous defence industry. Partnership is valuable. Dependence is dangerous.
Washington also faces a choice. It cannot describe India as a central strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific while strengthening Pakistan’s military capabilities without meaningful conditions. It cannot claim to oppose terrorism while repeatedly rewarding an establishment accused for decades of protecting selected militant groups. Placing a responsible democracy and a security apparatus that has used proxies on the same diplomatic scale is not balanced. It is strategic laziness.
The latest collision did not become a shooting war. That was luck, not diplomacy. A future encounter could produce casualties, retaliatory fire, and public pressure that leaves leaders only minutes to prevent escalation. Between nuclear-armed states, a local act of recklessness can rapidly become a regional catastrophe.
Pakistan must understand that dangerous manoeuvres, proxy violence, and nuclear blackmail will carry a cost. India must make that cost credible through preparedness, evidence, and deterrence. The United States may continue believing that it can arm the arsonist and send him to fight the fire. India must ensure that the flames never reach its home.