Security Lessons For India From The Iran Conflict

TK ARUN

India has to acquire technological sovereignty, if it is to retain strategic autonomy, even as middle powers now unsure of an American nuclear shield yearn for nuclear weapons.

What lesson would a middle power draw from the Israel-led American assault on Iran? To be immune to arbitrary attacks by more powerful nations, a country needs nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them – like North Korea. In a world in which previous certainties, such as a US nuclear umbrella for presumed allies, lie shattered, no country seeking true autonomy can make do without nuclear capability of its own.

Nor is it enough to have nuclear capability. In order to guard against transgressions that fall short of devastation, a nation needs significant conventional firepower as well. Trump instigated the commitment by America’s Nato allies in Europe to raise annual defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, and spend another 1.5% of GDP on fortifying security-related logistics and infra.

This, he did in two ways. One, by refusing to continue funding European defence, even as Europe spent its own fiscal resources on domestic welfare. The other lever for exerting pressure on countries to raise expenditure on defence is the death of Pax Americana. The rules-based world order, such as it was, lies trampled into the dust by Trump’s vigorous embrace first, of American isolationism, and then, of American unilateralism.

It has become commonplace for commentators to quote the Greek historian Thucydides to describe America’s new policy orientation: “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” The context might be familiar to a Western audience trained, in the not-too-distant past, to study Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War , as a matter of routine, but not to most of us.

The Peloponnesian War lasted 27 years, from 431 BC to 404 BC. The term Peloponnese derives from Pelopos, meaning of Pelops (Pelops was a Greek god), and nesos, meaning island. Peloponnese, however, was a peninsula, comprising cities like Sparta and Olympia, among others, between the Ionic and Aegean Seas. The Peloponnesian League was led by Sparta, which challenged the Athenian empire. The island of Melos refused to take sides between the two warring sides. In 416 BC, Athens decided to put an end to the so-called neutrality of this tiny uppity island and sent a naval fleet to conquer and annex it.

Before attacking, Athenians sent envoys to negotiate with the magistrates of Melos. Their discussion is captured by Thucydides as the Melian dialogue, in the course of which Athenians articulate the view that might is right. Melians stood on the side of justice and honour. They argued that it was unjust to attack a neutral state that posed no threat to Athens, and that the Gods would come to defend justice, or that the Spartans, with whom Melians shared kinship, would come to their aid. Melians stood in principled defiance.

Gods did not come to help Melos, nor did the Spartans. Athenian forces laid siege, starved the Melians to surrender, killed all adult men, sold women and children into slavery, and repopulated the island with their own people.

On the contemporary horizon as well, no gods are visible to protect justice. Honour and principle flow from the eloquent lips of the UN secretary-general. Those on the wrong side of the power differential between nations get killed like fleas.

India must build real strength, if it wants to protect its strategic autonomy. Strength today lies in technological sovereignty, spanning all advanced tech spanning computing, electronics, robotics, energy, Image: AI new materials, synthetic biology, aviation, financial technology, communications, and converting technology into manufacturing excellence.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute now tracks 74 critical technologies that shape strategic capacity. China leads in 66 and US in the remaining eight. India counts among the top five nations in just five technologies, despite having one of the largest pools of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This should not come as a surprise, as India spends just 0.65% of GDP on R&D, compared to 3% of GDP or more for China and US, and 5% of GDP or more for Korea and Israel.

No Indian company spends more than 6% of turnover on R&D, and that figure is for HAL. Our captains of industry strut on the global stage like peacocks, but their technological ambitions fly no higher than an ostrich does.

India’s R&D hope lies with a new breed of startups doing deep technological research, not with the big industrial houses. They must be given technological challenges to solve, and liberal funding. The sarkari plan to give loans to carry out R&D will fly like an emu, if not the ostrich. Startups need venture funds, and the Indian public would be happy to fund them. Indian investors pile into a limited universe of listed companies, raising their valuations to Palantir levels of folly. Give them a chance to invest in venture funds run by professionals with a track record to match their vision.

India has the talent, it slaves away in Global Capability Centres, constituting a brain drain at home. If policy does not figure out how to deploy Indian talent in Indian capability centres, Indians will learn the meaning of the Melian dialogue the hard way.

T.K. Arun, ex-Economic Times editor, is a Delhi-based senior journalist and columnist known for incisive analysis of economic and policy matters, based in Delhi.

This article was first published in The Sanjaya Report as Security lessons for India from the war on Iran on March 5, 2026.

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.