The Indo-Pak Military Rivalry Is Expanding Into The South Caucasus
To be frank, what’s happening is that Russia is being squeezed out of the South Caucasus as a result of the West’s plot to place Armenia under its “sphere of influence”, and it was this regional strategic recalibration that opened the doors for the Indo-Pak military rivalry to expand to the South Caucasus.
Business Insider cited unconfirmed Azeri and Pakistani media reports from late last month to inform their audience that Baku plans to buy JF-17 Thunder fighter jets from Islamabad. Those two majority-Muslim countries support one another on Karabakh and Kashmir so it’s natural that they’d expand military-technical cooperation. If this deal goes through, then it would represent an expansion of the Indo-Pak military rivalry to the South Caucasus after India already began arming Armenia last year.
It was assessed shortly before New Year’s that “India’s Arms Sales To Armenia Aim To Assist Yerevan’s Clumsy Balancing Act”, but then concern swirled that “Armenia Re-Exported Indian Shells To Poland To Pass Along To Ukraine At The US’ Behest”. Nevertheless, nothing was conclusively proven, and it’s possible that a different third party was responsible for this instead, hence why military-technical ties between Delhi and Yerevan weren’t disrupted as a result of that scandal.
Those two’s ties are premised on shared threat perceptions of Azerbaijan and Turkiye, which in India’s case is due to them politically supporting Pakistan in the unresolved decades-long Kashmir Conflict. Islamabad’s backing of Baku from 2020 onwards since the last large-scale Karabakh Conflict solidified ties between them and laid the basis for comprehensively expanding their military-technical dimension, which is reportedly about to culminate in a $1.6 billion JF-17 Thunder fighter jet deal.
From Russia’s perspective, the expansion of the Indo-Pak military rivalry to the South Caucasus isn’t a favorable development since Delhi’s growing military ties with Yerevan erode Moscow’s traditional dominance in this industry there while Islamabad’s do the same with Baku, but it could be worse. France and the US are speeding up their plans to turn Armenia into the West’s bastion of regional influence, the pace of which can only realistically be slowed down by India’s “military diplomacy”.
“Armenia’s Decision To Freeze Participation In The CSTO Was Predictable” despite “Lavrov Warning Armenia Against Ceding Its National Security To NATO” late last year after the West successfully convinced Pashinyan that Russia is to blame for its spree of military losses since 2020. Under these conditions, it’s objectively better for Russian – and therefore multipolar – interests for Armenia to not become entirely dependent on the West for its security, ergo the role that India is poised to fill.
If it wasn’t the arms that Delhi is sending to Yerevan, the latter could quickly pivot into becoming a NATO proxy, which could pose a threat to India and Russia’s shared Iranian strategic partner. In fact, India’s military exports to Armenia are thought to be facilitated by Iran, which strengthens those two’s ties and shows that Tehran also fears Yerevan’s latest Westward drift. Pakistan’s growing military influence in Azerbaijan, both of whom don’t have ideal ties with Iran nowadays, also concerns the Islamic Republic.
To be frank, what’s happening is that Russia is being squeezed out of the South Caucasus as a result of the West’s plot to place Armenia under its “sphere of influence”, and it was this regional strategic recalibration that opened the doors for the Indo-Pak military rivalry to expand to the South Caucasus. India began replacing a portion of Russia’s previous dominant position in Armenia’s arms industry with Iranian support, which coincided with the development of Azeri-Pakistani JF-17 Thunder fighter jet talks.
Readers should be aware that the aforementioned air systems are also jointly produced by China so it’s actually the case that Beijing is also expanding its military influence in the South Caucasus, albeit very quietly and only indirectly for now at least. Interestingly, this parallels Russia doing the same in the South China Sea when it comes to Moscow’s recent approval for India to export jointly produced supersonic cruise missiles to the Philippines, thus hinting at an emerging Sino-Russo arms competition in Asia.
It’s premature to speculate on its potential consequences other than it being unlikely to impede their joint efforts to accelerate multipolar processes since this competition is poised to remain manageable due to their shared worldview. The larger trend is that Asian countries are more confidently practicing “military diplomacy”, which used to be the exclusive sphere of the West and Russia (the so-called “first” and “second” worlds), though this development hasn’t yet received the attention that it deserves.