Submitted by ICConline on
On 7 May, apparently in response to an attack that had killed 28 people in Kashmir a few weeks earlier, the Indian army launched an initial attack on Pakistani territory aimed at destroying the bases of the organisations accused of carrying out the attack. The following three days saw a succession of counter-attacks and new waves of bombardments between India and Pakistan, marking the most intense confrontation between the two countries for decades. A new anguish gripped the world's population, adding to the ravages of the war in Ukraine (almost a million soldiers dead and wounded), the appalling massacres in Gaza, and a myriad of conflicts, each more barbaric than the last, in Sudan (more than 9 million displaced), Yemen, Congo, Syria, etc. A new eruption of barbarity in a world plagued by war and carnage!
This military confrontation is all the more devastating in that it involves two overpopulated, over-militarised nations (1.2 million soldiers for India, 500,000 for Pakistan) with lethal arsenals including nuclear weapons on both sides. It is taking place in a region of the world of crucial strategic importance, where the United States is trying to ‘clip the wings’ of its main challenger, China. But even more than the ‘explosive charge’ contained in this conflict, it is the context in which it is taking place that is the most dangerous: that of accelerating imperialist chaos, the rise of warmongering and irrationality, and the accentuation of the tendency towards ‘every man for himself’[1].
A conflict intensified by the explosion of ‘every man for himself’
Pakistan and India certainly have a long history of confrontation, linked to the dissolution of British India, when the two states were born in a bloodbath (war of 1947-1948, millions displaced and 1 million dead). Since then, there has been a succession of wars and skirmishes: in 1965 when Pakistan wanted to precipitate the independence of Kashmir from India, in 1971 when India pushed for the independence of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), in 1999 during the ‘Kargil war’, in 2001 with the assault on the Indian parliament by a Pakistan-sponsored terrorist group, etc.
Initially, the confrontations took place within the framework of the iron discipline imposed by the antagonistic imperialist blocs of the Cold War, the Western bloc and the bloc dominated by the USSR. Since the 1990s, however, we have seen the crumbling of this bloc discipline, with each national bourgeoisie resolving its conflicts with other national bourgeoisies on its own, resorting to increasingly bloody and irrational, and therefore potentially highly dangerous, conflicts. This is particularly true of the current conflict between India and Pakistan:
- Since the early 1990s, India and Pakistan have been developing their nuclear arsenals, with each country now possessing around 170 nuclear warheads.
- In the 21st century, communal and religious tensions have intensified. Bloody massacres perpetrated by radical Pakistani Islamist groups have multiplied against Indian civilians and soldiers (2001 in India, 2019 and 2025 in Kashmir). Modi's nationalist and populist Indian government revoked Kashmir's constitutional autonomy and placed it under the direct authority of the central government. This has resulted in fierce repression of the Kashmiris and heavy pressure on the Muslim minority in India.
- In the recent clashes, unlike previous conflicts which were largely confined to the disputed region of Kashmir, Indian retaliation hit three air bases in the heart of Pakistan (Nur Khan near Rawalpindi, Murid and Rafiqui). Unlike previous bombings of areas harbouring Islamist militias operating in Kashmir, this time they targeted vital centres of the Pakistani army (Nur Khan is home to the Pakistani army headquarters and the nuclear response control centre), using drones, fighter jets and cruise missiles.
The risk of escalation to a level of catastrophic destruction is therefore obvious, as one geostrategic expert in the region points out: “As armies attack a greater number of targets with an ever-expanding arsenal of new weapons, the possibility of catastrophe soars. Whatever the rationality of the Indian and Pakistani leaders, the risk of miscalculation or misunderstanding, in the absence of reliable crisis communication channels, makes any future outbreak of violence more dangerous”[2].
In the current phase of accelerating capitalist decomposition, war is becoming increasingly irrational and barbaric, as the Modi government's intention to use natural resources as a weapon of war further demonstrates: “India has taken the unprecedented step of unilaterally suspending the Indus Treaty, an agreement negotiated by the World Bank in 1960 to manage the flow of water essential for hydropower, irrigation and agriculture in Pakistan. The treaty had withstood several wars and militarised conflicts between the two countries, but not any more”. [3]
In the end, all parties involved will be the losers without any economic or strategic gain or advantage, while the most irresponsible bourgeois factions are strengthened: this war further strengthens the Pakistani generals, who talk of military victory and call for an increasingly aggressive response towards India, while brutally repressing any protest movement. The same is true in India, where Modi is using the conflict with Pakistan as an alibi to revive nationalist hysteria and anti-Muslim propaganda. This situation is not unique. It is the same as what we see with Putin in Russia or with the megalomaniac delusions of the Netanyahu faction in Israel.
Whether the Indian government underestimated Pakistan's capacity to react (increasingly and better armed by China) or whether it wanted to make a show of force to assert its military capabilities in the face of Pakistan, China and the Americans is a matter of conjecture. What we can predict without any doubt, however, is that this macabre game of imperialist ambitions will intensify and that the fragile ceasefire ‘negotiated’ by the US administration (an intervention denied by India) will not withstand the dominant trend towards war and chaos into which capitalism is sinking. For it is not the ruling scoundrels in India and Pakistan who are ultimately responsible for the proliferation and aggravation of imperialist massacres: the primary cause of the massacres underway and still to come is the rotting capitalist ‘order’.
Down with the nationalist campaigns!
The Indian and Pakistani bourgeoisies are calling on workers to rally to the national flag in defence of ‘the outraged honour of the fatherland’. What criminal hypocrisy!
In the war in Ukraine, all the belligerents are sacrificing hundreds of thousands of human beings for the conquest of a few miserable kilometers of land ravaged by fighting. In the Middle East, all the warring factions are using terror to reduce a whole region to ruins and massacre the population in the most barbaric ways.
In Pakistan itself, entire regions are being rendered uninhabitable by internal armed conflicts and massive flooding, while ethnic and religious conflicts are tearing India apart. As capitalism, under the effect of its own contradictions, sinks ineluctably into chaos, all the factions of the exploiting class throughout the world have nothing left to offer but the sacrifice of proletarians to their sordid and barbaric imperialist ambitions. And with the prospect of a confrontation between the atomic powers of India and Pakistan, as well as threats against Iran's nuclear programme or the bombing of the Zaporiya nuclear power station, the risk of a major nuclear accident has considerably increased.
There is only one alternative: the development of proletarian internationalism, the refusal to fight against our class brothers and sisters. All the workers of the world have the same interest. We are the main victims of war, sent to the front as cannon fodder or as hostages overexploited to the point of exhaustion to pay for an arms build-up that is increasing throughout the world.
The proletariat does not yet have the strength to prevent the proliferation of wars, but it can acquire it through its struggles against the capitalist attacks on its living conditions. Such a struggle is taking place in many countries and in these struggles, workers are tending to recognise themselves as a single class. They are gradually realising that they all have the same enemies: the exploiters, whatever their colour, religion or nationality.
Valerio, 31 May 2025
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