US CHINA in Shock as India gets Military Base in Indonesia

Hahahahahaha!

 

It's simply not that ridiculous an idea. The British Empire, with a much smaller ratio to India in terms of both economic strength and demographics, managed to control India for over a century. The USSR, with Indian help, could've brought Pakistan under control and attain a logistics pipeline very similar to that which the Americans and British used to supply the Russians during WWII.

Preventing Russian access to the Indian Ocean is a perogative the Americans inherited from the British, and we succeeded.

 

1980 wasn't 1880 or 1780. Russia was already struggling to control its own empire and proved unable to control Afghanistan. Adding another 100 million Pakistanis to the equation seems unlikely to have made that easier. Such an occupation would have required huge manpower & resources - enough to compromise security elsewhere.

Pakistan was allied to the other two biggest military powers in the world - the USA & China. China wouldn't intervene directly, but it would have to do something - supply Pakistan at the very least. The US could very well have intervened, if only in a limited way. That would have been a massive risk. Imagine the US parking a few carriers off the Pakistani coast & sending B-52s from Diego Garcia to carpet bomb the Khyber Pass. Cut that & the whole invasion is in trouble.

There is zero guarantee India would have helped, especially if it risked crossing the US & China in a big way. India might have helped with logistics. However, if the US was sufficiently motivated it could make life incredibly difficult for India. My bet is that they sit it out.

That is one massive set of risk factors to obtain something the USSR already had - access to warm water ports in the Indian ocean.

I am yet to see any evidence that the USSR seriously considered invading Pakistan, let alone that invading Afghanistan was done purely as a precursor to such an invasion.