Table of Contents
Today’s brief reads three articles. Pravesh Kumar Gupta of the Vivekananda International Foundation asks who gained from the NATO summit at Ankara. Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha in Firstpost says India can no longer assume that Bangladesh will keep its eastern flank quiet. Haseeb A Drabu in The Indian Express argues that statehood for Jammu and Kashmir will be settled by a political bargain and not by a constitutional argument.
NATO held together at Ankara, and Kyiv and Ankara took the gains.
Pravesh Kumar Gupta writes on the NATO summit held at Ankara on 7 and 8 July 2026. The alliance met at a bad moment. The United States had just fought alongside Israel against Iran. President Trump had attacked his own allies in public. Europe was concerned about Russian military strength. Many expected an open quarrel over who pays for defence. Gupta finds that no quarrel came. The leaders repeated the promise of Article 5 and put money on the table. He then asks who walked away with something. His answer is Kyiv and Ankara.
The record
- The summit was held at Ankara on 7 and 8 July 2026.
- The leaders reaffirmed Article 5 and a 360 degree approach to deterrence and defence.
- They announced more than 50 billion dollars in new procurements. They also promised to expand their joint manufacturing capacity.
- They pledged 70 billion euro for 2026 for military equipment, assistance and training for Ukraine. They said they would hold that level in 2027.
- European allies and Canada now pay for most of the security assistance that reaches Ukraine.
- Trump gave Ukraine permission to make American Patriot air defence systems and interceptor missiles at home. He also said the United States would buy military drones from Ukraine.
- Zelenskyy asked the summit to speed up Ukraine’s entry into NATO.
- The United States showed that it was ready to lift CAATSA sanctions on Turkey and to invite it back into the F-35 fighter programme. In return Ankara may have to give up the Russian S-400 air defence system.
- Those sanctions were imposed in December 2020, after Ankara bought the S-400. Turkey had been put out of the F-35 programme in 2019. The United States feared that flying the S-400 beside the F-35 would expose the sensitive technology of the aircraft.
- At the summit Turkish firms signed export contracts for electronic warfare systems to Poland and warships to Romania.
- The article names South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Australia as the alliance’s partners in the Asia Pacific.
- Slovakia refused to join the pledges of military aid. Its leader Robert Fico said many members at the summit were ready to talk to Russia.
The argument
The 2024 Paper II question asks whether the United States uses NATO to keep its hegemony. Gupta gives you the material for both sides. Europe and Canada now pay for most of the aid to Ukraine, so the burden has moved across the ocean. Yet the permission to build Patriots, the purchase of drones and the offer to Turkey were all American decisions. The money moved. The direction did not.
Turkey is the case to remember for a middle power. It has no great economy behind it. It has a position on the map, an arms industry and a place between the two sides. It turned all three into the lifting of sanctions and a road back into the F-35 programme. That is national interest pursued with small means, and it answers any question on what a state without great power can still get.
NATO is the standing example of collective defence in Paper II-A. Article 5 and the 360 degree approach are what the alliance says about itself. Ankara shows what it does when its members disagree. Slovakia would not sign the aid pledges and said so in public, and the alliance still closed ranks.
For India the point is industrial. Turkish firms sold electronic warfare systems to Poland and warships to Romania while the summit was sitting. A state that can supply arms carries weight in alliance politics. A state that only buys them does not.
“Despite all the anticipation, the NATO summit in Ankara demonstrated that the organization has survived the frictions and is resilient.”
Pravesh Kumar Gupta
“Ukraine brings substantial defence industry strength and combat experience to Euro-Atlantic security; therefore, Kyiv becoming a member of NATO will be beneficial for European security architecture.”
Zelenskyy
India's link with the Northeast was safe only while Dhaka was friendly, and that has ended.
Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha starts with the recent war in the Persian Gulf. He draws one lesson from it. A weaker state can make up for weakness by using geography. He then moves that lesson to land, to the Siliguri Corridor. For fifty years India assumed that Bangladesh would stay well disposed towards it, because Indian soldiers had helped to create it. Sinha says that assumption is dead. A narrow passage of land carries the whole weight of India’s link with the Northeast. The government on the other side of it now looks to China and Pakistan.
The record
- The Siliguri Corridor is a land passage 22 km wide. It connects the northeastern states to the rest of the country.
- Inside India the corridor touches Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya. Outside it lie Bangladesh and Bhutan, and behind Bhutan, China.
- The India Bangladesh boundary runs 4,096 km. West Bengal has 2,217 km of it, Tripura 856 km, Meghalaya 443 km, Mizoram 318 km and Assam 262 km.
- There are 16 official crossing points with customs and immigration posts. Assam has 3, West Bengal 4, Meghalaya 5, Tripura 3 and Mizoram 1.
- Bangladesh has asked a Chinese state construction firm to make the disused Second World War runway at Lalmonirhat fit for its air force. That airfield is about 135 km from the corridor.
- In the thirteenth parliamentary election the BNP won 208 of the 350 seats with 49.97 percent of the vote. Jamaat-e-Islami won 69 seats with 31.76 percent.
- Six of the Bangladeshi districts facing West Bengal are strongholds of Jamaat. The stretch along the corridor is among them.
- Pakistan is on record to supply Chinese J-10 fighters to Bangladesh. Its air force would train the crews and maintain the aircraft there.
- Pakistani authorities are on record that they will use Bangladesh for an attack on India’s eastern flank in the next conflict.
- China has put large sums into Bangladesh’s infrastructure and military equipment. Chittagong has been built as a deepwater port for the two submarines China sold to Bangladesh.
- Chinese warships and submarines now visit Bangladesh often. Sinha says this opens Indian naval movement in the Bay of Bengal and DRDO missile tests to Chinese watching.
- When voter lists were checked before the West Bengal assembly election, about 9 million people were found who are not citizens. Six million of them are dead or absent. A tribunal is examining the rest.
- Sinha writes that the United States entered Bangladesh on the argument of a land corridor through Chittagong to Myanmar for relief work for Rohingya refugees. He believes it wants a foothold in the Bay of Bengal and a watch on China’s other route to the Indian Ocean.
- His own proposal is a union territory around the corridor. It would take parts of Kishanganj, Katihar and Purnea in Bihar, Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling in West Bengal, Dhubri, South Salmara, Karimganj and Cachar in Assam, parts of the Garo Hills districts in Meghalaya, parts of the border districts of Tripura, and parts of Lunglei, Mamit and Lawngtlai in Mizoram. All of it would come under the direct control of the Centre.
The argument
The 2025 Paper II question asks whether China’s growing presence in Bangladesh has weakened India’s position in Dhaka. This article is the security half of that answer. An airfield at Lalmonirhat, made fit for use with Chinese help, sits 135 km from a corridor 22 km wide. The J-10 sale and the port at Chittagong built for Chinese submarines belong in the same paragraph.
The corridor shows how geography sets a limit on policy. It is the only land connection with the Northeast, so every plan for those states rests on it. Sinha’s argument is that the link was never protected by force. It was protected by a friendly government in Dhaka. Governments change.
Sinha ends with a proposal that belongs to Paper I-B as much as to Paper II-B. A union territory cut out of the border districts of six states would move the corridor from state governments to the Centre. Ask what that does to centre state relations before you use it in an answer.
Read one part of the article with care. Parts of it read recent American activity in the region as a plot against India. Those passages are what Sinha suspects, and he offers no proof for them. Use the geography, the figures and the argument about Dhaka. Leave the rest out.
“India’s basic premise that the creation of Bangladesh was the result of the sacrifice of Indian soldiers, and therefore the regimes will remain well disposed towards our security concerns, has evaporated after 50 years.”
Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha
“There is a common saying: where a needle works, a sword is of little use.”
Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha
Statehood for Jammu and Kashmir will be settled by a bargain, not by a constitutional argument.
Haseeb A Drabu counts the years. Seven since Jammu and Kashmir was made a Union Territory. Five since the Union government told Parliament that statehood would be restored. Two since an elected government took office. In all that time there has been no serious conversation about it. Drabu says the reason is not legal. The Centre treats security and normalcy as conditions it will not trade away. Statehood, when it comes, will be the result of a political bargain. The parties in the Valley are still making a case out of promises and precedents, and that is why they are getting nowhere.
The record
- It is seven years since Jammu and Kashmir was made a Union Territory. It is five years since the Union government committed in Parliament to restore statehood. Delimitation was done four years ago. The Supreme Court was assured of restoration three years ago. An elected government has been in place for two years.
- The Centre’s one answer has been that statehood will be restored at the appropriate time.
- The National Conference called a protest in New Delhi on 20 July. Every other party based in the Valley stayed away from it.
- The National Conference is part of the UPA. It had asked national and regional parties to join, which would have framed the demand as a federal question touching the basic structure of India’s constitutional arrangements.
- At the protest the speeches turned on constitutional morality, legislative assurances, judicial precedents and political commitments. Drabu calls these valid but of limited use in the present situation.
- For the Centre, security and normalcy are preconditions that cannot be traded. Drabu says this is not a temporary hurdle.
- Ladakh is the precedent. Statehood there has been made conditional on meeting revenue and self-sustainability tests. Drabu expects Jammu and Kashmir to be treated the same way.
- A police officer on Amarnath yatra duty was killed the day before the article appeared. It was the first terror attack in the Valley since Pahalgam.
- Drabu argues that statehood cannot be restored by an executive order that changes the status alone. That would leave in place the administrative and financial distortions created since 2019.
- Making the state a Union Territory did more than alter administrative boundaries. Drabu writes that it changed the way the place is governed and deepened its dependence on the Centre.
- His remedy has two steps. First, a common position across the parties on the benchmarks for normalcy that the Centre will not give up. Second, a time-bound framework for unwinding central control through a settled administrative mechanism.
The argument
Use this article for centre state relations. The question it asks is not what the Constitution permits. It is what the Centre will agree to, and what it will ask for in return. Powers here are being returned in exchange for conduct, which is a form of bargaining that the text of the Constitution does not describe.
The 2025 Paper I question asks for the factors that have shaped politics in Jammu and Kashmir after 2019. Drabu gives you four of them. The Centre’s test of security and normalcy, the split among the Valley parties, the conditions attached to Ladakh, and the change in the way the territory is now governed.
Learn the distinction he draws. For the Union, restoration is a decision to be taken at a chosen moment. For Jammu and Kashmir, it is a process. A decision can be announced. A process has to be negotiated, and the distortions of seven years have to be removed step by step.
The Ladakh condition is worth carrying into answers on constitutional provisions on federalism. Statehood there has been tied to revenue and self-sustainability. Powers come back with terms attached, and the terms are set by the Centre.
“The “appropriate time” is not a date on the calendar; it is whatever time suits the present dispensation.”
Haseeb A Drabu
“Without such a phased and negotiated roadmap, the demand for statehood risks remaining a recurring political slogan instead of becoming a manageable political settlement.”
Haseeb A Drabu
Where this belongs in your syllabus
Open the note and read the full topic.
The questions this feeds
Questions from earlier years that today’s reading speaks to. Where the answer is written, the red link opens it. The full set is in the PYQ Vault.
- PSIR Paper II · 2024 · 15m"Do you agree with the view that the USA uses NATO as a traditional tool of strategy to perpetuate its hegemony in the world?"Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2025 · 15m"Trump's return to the White House is a jolt to push the European Union to invest in its own defence and economic and technological revival." Comment.Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2025 · 10m"China's growing footprint and a tangible shift in power dynamics in Bangladesh has weakened India's leverage in Dhaka." Comment.Answer
- PSIR Paper II · 2024implications of scrapping the Free Movement Regime with Myanmar for the ethno-political dynamics of the north-eastern region.
- PSIR Paper I · 2025 · 10m"Delineate the key factors that have shaped the evolving political landscape in Jammu and Kashmir post 2019."Answer
- GS-2 · 2025nature of the J&K Legislative Assembly after the Reorganization Act, 2019, and the powers and functions of the UT Assembly.