Complexities of war

Despite all the complexities of war, even a simple question like "Why did Israel-USA attack Iran (all of a sudden) on 28 Feb 2026?"

There are so many different perspectives:

1. Change the focus from Scandal perspective - Over the previous 1 week 7 big names have come out and maybe the next was DJT. Hence, he needed something bigger to distract the media and the accusations.

2. The China angle - DJT was to meet Xi in late march to negotitate and he wanted 2 main keys of oil before this meeting. One was Venezuela and the other was Iran, both of which do a lot of oil selling to China. He blocked Venezuela with picking up Maduro and hoped that Iran would be controlled with the leadership gone and internal infighting/ upraising.

3. The Military Intelligence angle - Israel-USA got to know that there is going to be a meeting of 50 senior leadership of Iran on 28 Feb 2026 and although both were preparing for war, this opportunity was too irresistible to not bomb.

All this, when there was no Imminent threat to USA (As per the counterterrorism chief who resigned) and the war was not winnable (according to both the USA agencies - their intelligence and the Pentagon).

Asymmetricity

Case A: 

I have heard of Asymetric warfare multiple times. Mostly used in the context of Guerrilla warfare and drone warfare. 

Why is this asymetric? 

Because low cost things and tactics can overcome high cost professional things and tactics.

The cost and the results make the investments asymmetric.

Case B: 

Private equity takes asymmetric bets knowing very well that only 1 or 2 companies in the portfolio gives outsized returns and makes far more money than the losses incurred in the other companies.

Case 3:

A 10 X thinking involves taking calculated risks where the upside far outweighs the downside.

10x thinkers know not every bet pays off, but one great one can change everything.

Case 4:
Usually, for a company out of all the products, there would usually be 1 or 2 product categories that gives disproportionate profits or are asymmetric.

The pattern across things is that Asymmetric investments yield outsized returns.

It takes a lot of research, knowledge to identify asymetric opportunities.

In conclusion, asymmetric thinking is a way of thinking or provides a framework to think.

2 mangoes with 1 stone

It is intuitive that China supporting Pakistan militarily is bad for India.

But, this problem can also be viewed as an opportunity from a counter-intuitive point of view.

War and weapons is a continuous cat and mouse game. The one with superior strategies, weapons, technologies, tactics and coordination will win any day.

By engaging and dominating the Pakistan armed forces which use a lot of Chinese weaponry, India has learnt and needs to overpower specific weapons and their features/ advantages.

For example, if one particular weapon like Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air to air missile has a 100km range, India only needs to arm itself to a better range than 100 km to make the enemy weapon ineffective in an air to air combat.

If it has a 50 km Howitzer, we need to have a 60 km Howitzer to not enable it to come in range at all (unless already deployed).

This way, we can choose to make / procure weapons with better features that can beat the all in one competitor (Chinese weapons) rather than trying to dominate over 4 different countries' different weapons and their systems.

Far more nail-biting than IPL!

This IPL season, there is one real nail biting and interesting match I am eager to witness.

The real India Pakistan match.

And how India is going to thrash the Pakistani military and its puppet govt.

India will go with Military action this time too. The question is when? Tonight or tomorrow night or day after night? The bets are on!

India has already flooded a district of PoK last night.

What is different this time is the context.

External to both these countries, the state of the 2 biggest associated countries - China and USA and the 2 running wars.

China usually supports Pakistan militarily and has been against India in multiple fronts including the trade front. But this time, if India gains some key areas in PoK, the China invested area in PoK for the Belt and Road Initiative would be for India to destroy or overtake. This would be interesting to see how China would respond: Whether it would ask India to not destroy their investment or to deter India, start a parallel military campaign on India-China border. The other change this time is China's slowly warming to India after many years of the military standoff as its trade war with USA is raging.

USA this time is very different than all the historical USA. With an indifferent Trump at its President who has very weird goals, (like making Gaza a tourist spot) and not getting USA into any new war and trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war. But, unfortunately, as usual, USA has supported Pakistan again and given USD 400 million aid to Pakistan to sustain its F-16s. Mostly, USA wants to watch the 'fun' from the sidelines and then ask India to invest more into its Apaches, AWACs, F-35s and other military platforms.

Wars are not anathema in today's world. The Russian war on Ukraine saw the first fulls scale war in history in Europe after 60+ years. The Israel-Palestine war is also running. People are not so against war and reasonably expect it in case of retribution.

This time, the Indian govt. is more determined to take action than the previous govts and is willing to make use of all the historical mistakes it has done previously and turn it around.

Best case scenario: 

1. Breakup of Pakistan into an independent Balochistan (40% of Pakistan territory) and the rest of Pakistan

2. Retaking of PoK by India

3. Destruction of China's investment in PoK worth billions and stopping China in its tracks

Only if Pakistan was not nuclear armed, all this could have been achieved with much ease.

Fingers crossed and waiting to read the books on this war and the strategies employed a few years from now.

The fall of the US Dollar

Over the last 20 years, there has been multiple disquiets about the de-dollarisation. 

1. It has been stated that USA went to war with Iraq overthrowing Saddam Hussain and Libya overthrowing Gadaffi as these oil producers were exploring selling oil in currencies other than dollars, thereby removing USD hegemony.

2. Wars - The USA didn't do any favours for itself by constantly raising it's debt levels and printing more dollars and starting wars around the world directly like Iraq, Afghanistan or indirectly in Ukraine by expanding NATO countries continuously and then funding Ukraine. Also, funding Israel for it's war in Gaza.

3. BRICS - Over the last 10 years, the formation of the BRICS currency gained ground which would compete with the US dollar globally and almost all nations in the world trade with one or more of the BRICS countries.

The inter trade itself among BRICS countries itself is huge. Plus, the potential of Saudi Arabia, being the world's largest oil producer,  joining this alliance adds weight to the the new currency and more transactions.

4. Crypto currencies - The other counter weight underdog which has been waiting in the wings is crypto currencies. These have certain features of non-manipulation which is necessary to avoid the manipulation of countries and bring accountability to the countries.

The call of the imminent fall of the dollar is increasingly going up. The following are evidences. 

5. Big US based investors/ companies have accumulated crypto currencies. The current US administration of declaring to having a strategic crypto currency reserve. This means that it is moving away from Gold reserves to this.

6. The open talk by the current US administration of auditing fort Knox to check if the US gold is really there. This further highlights that maybe there is no actual gold there and it is a bogus trust. Adding Crypto currencies is a countermeasure to add value and trust.

7. Maybe, this in consonance with the tariff wars will bring down the value of the dollar and make it competitive enough to start manufacturing again. But, can the USA citizens afford the high cost of imports once the dollar goes down?

This would degrade the lifestyles and would become a true developing class nation which got hidden as a developed country just because of printing own money and having it's value just because it was a reserve currency and everyone traded in it.

I have been watching these signs over the years and for the last 2 years came to the conclusion that the USD would fall substantially over the next 5-10 years.

My prediction gets more substantiated when a famous investor like Ray Dalio starts ads on instagram on a book on the fall of nations indirectly or directly talks about the USA.

Update 4 Apr 2025: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has joined the chorus of voices warning that the U.S. dollar's reserve currency status is at risk. Unlike most, however, he has gone one step further to suggest a likely replacement: Bitcoin.

Giants do their own thing

The giants of the world - USA, China, Russia do what they please. It seems that they are all in a cartel. Whenever they want to attack, block, intimidate, loot, capture, bomb, takeover, harass, overthrow dictorial/ democratically elected governments/leaders, assassinate or buyout, etc. any territory, resources, country or person, government, group or leader etc., they do so without giving a damn of what the others will say/do. How else, can these giants take unilateral action against so many sovereign nations?
USA did it to Iraq, Afganistan, Many south American countries, etc. (the list is long)
China does/did it to Tibet, Taiwan, Spartly islands
Russia is doing it to Crimea region of Ukraine.
There is one big exception though - India.
Its useless politicians/ political parties/ bureaucrats are not able to defend the countries' face against the smallest of neighbours like Maldives and Sri Lanka despite years of relationship. They are not able to provide modernisation of weapons to its army and navy assets and with the likely non-sense that has happened so far, it is very difficult to see India being able to do anything unilaterally even if it wants to.

An interesting way to learn/test history is to do the following match the following puzzle:

Country| Did this                 | To                            | Motivation              | Reason claimed
USA      | Attacked                | Tibet                        | Annexe Territory       | Remove Dictator
China     | Harrase(d)             | Georgia                   | Kill competition         | Give democracy
Russia    | Bombed                | Iran                         | Oil resources              | Remove WMD
India      | Looted                   | Libya                       | Strategic trade route   | Give Independence
NATO   | Overthrew             | Nicaragua                | Other resources          | Destroy Terrorism
UK        | Captured                | Philippines               | Take Revenge
France   | Intimidated           | Bangladesh              | Nullify future threat
              | Occupied               | Dominican Republic  | Show military might
              | Gave Indepedence | Haiti                          | Force trade
              | Forced Exile          | Mali
              | Assassination      | Panama
              | Fought                   | Mexico
              | Intervened militarily| Honduras

The future of missiles

With every almost big country having Missiles and if not, at least RPGs and shoulder deployable ones like stinger missiles, and ever major country developing/deploying an anti-missile shield (with Israel and US leading them), the next generation of weapons needs to be developed. My guess or rather a way to it is developing missiles which can detect incoming anti-missile and rapid change trajectory/direction randomly more than once to shake off the incoming anti-missile. The one who does this can avoid the missile shield successfully. Though it may not be possible to hit the targets which are protected by the anti-aircraft/anit-missile guns (these have a very high rate of fire, and create something more like a wall which blocks the incoming missile; the closer the missile gets to the target and maintains its trajectory, the easier it is for the gun to stay stable and fire at the missile).

Love & war 2

"War (like love) is easier to start than to stop": H.L.Mencken

A farewell to Victory

 knoA beautiful article on the trends of how the definition of victory in wars has changed over time. Gives pros and cons of different victory methods and specific examples from around the world and what happened where and how.

An 8 page excellent brief of almost all the wars that mattered and matter.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/229869/page/1