Modi’s Plan to Isolate Pakistan Has Badly Backfired

Modi’s Bid to Isolate Pakistan Backfired | India’s Diplomatic Setback

Modi’s bid to isolate Pakistan has backfired, and the evidence is impossible to ignore. While New Delhi was busy trying to corner Islamabad on the world stage, Pakistan quietly rebuilt alliances, charmed Washington, deepened ties with Beijing, and emerged as a key mediator in one of the most volatile geopolitical crises of our time. Meanwhile, India finds itself increasingly locked out of the very conversations it once expected to dominate. This is the story of how a decade-long diplomatic offensive turned against the country that launched it.

A Promise Made in Public

The moment is still vivid. In September 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood at a rally in Kerala, fist pounding the lectern, voice rising over a sea of supporters. Eighteen Indian soldiers had just been killed in an armed attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, and he was in no mood for restraint.

“India has been successful in isolating you, and we will intensify those efforts,” he said, directing his words squarely at Pakistan’s leaders. “We will make sure that you are isolated around the world.”

It wasn’t just campaign rhetoric. It became the operating philosophy of Indian foreign policy for the next ten years. New Delhi boycotted the SAARC summit scheduled in Islamabad. India raised Pakistan’s alleged support for armed groups at BRICS forums. It lobbied Western capitals to treat Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism. It suspended high-level diplomacy under the “terror and talks cannot go together” doctrine. And for a while, some of it seemed to be working.

Today, almost a decade later, the picture could not look more different.

Pakistan’s Diplomatic Renaissance

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was in Beijing this week, where Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly described their countries’ bond as “unbreakable.” The visit was the latest chapter in a diplomatic resurgence that has left Indian policymakers visibly uncomfortable.

Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, has had lunch at the White House. Sharif himself has met US President Donald Trump there. Islamabad is currently serving as the principal mediator between Washington and Tehran in the ongoing US-Iran conflict, a role that would have seemed fantastical even two years ago. And Trump, who once accused Pakistan of “deceit and lies” during his first term, has repeatedly praised Pakistani leadership in recent months, calling Munir his “favourite Field Marshal” and “an exceptional human being.”

“Certainly, India’s strategy of undercutting and indeed isolating Pakistan, regionally and globally, has backfired in a big way,” Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow on South Asia at the Atlantic Council, told Al Jazeera. The assessment was blunt, but it reflects a consensus that has been building in foreign policy circles for months.

The Ceasefire That Changed Everything

The turning point came in May 2025. Following a horrific attack near the tourist town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir — in which gunmen killed 26 tourists — India launched military strikes deep inside Pakistani territory under what it called Operation Sindoor. The retaliation triggered four days of intense fighting: ballistic missiles, drone strikes, and aerial combat. Dozens of people on both sides of the border lost their lives. It was the worst India-Pakistan military confrontation in decades.

The conflict ended on May 10, 2025, when Trump posted on Truth Social: “After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE.”

Pakistan’s response was swift and politically savvy. Sharif publicly thanked Trump for his “leadership and proactive role.” Within days, Islamabad nominated the US president for the Nobel Peace Prize, a gesture that landed exactly as intended in Washington. Trump, who had previously shown little warmth for Pakistan, was visibly pleased.

India’s response was the opposite. Modi, who had cultivated a personal friendship with Trump and met him in the Oval Office just months earlier, went silent. He did not acknowledge Trump’s role. India’s foreign secretary confirmed the ceasefire, but the Prime Minister said nothing publicly. When Trump later asked Modi, who was in Canada at the time to fly over to Washington for a meeting, Modi turned him down, preferring instead to make his position clear by phone: India would not accept third-party mediation, and the ceasefire had been reached through direct bilateral talks with Islamabad.

The Narrative War India Lost

Beyond the military dimension, India found itself on the losing end of what Kugelman described as “the global battle of narratives.”

New Delhi failed to convince key international partners that Pakistan bore direct responsibility for the Pahalgam attack. “The world did not step back and encourage India to carry out strikes,” Kugelman noted. “World capitals noted that India did not provide proof of any Pakistani complicity in the Pahalgam attack.”

Pakistan, for its part, framed itself as the restrained actor, a nuclear-armed country forced to defend itself while extending the hand of peace. By praising Trump and nominating him for the Nobel, Islamabad made the US president a stakeholder in portraying Pakistan positively. The strategy worked.

Former Chief of India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), A. S. Dulat, was unusually candid about the results. In a recent interview, he acknowledged that India had “unsuccessfully attempted to isolate Pakistan globally from the very beginning,” adding that despite using “all available resources, international lobbying, and proxies,” New Delhi had failed to achieve its objectives.

The Cost of Abandoning SAARC

The failure is not only about the ceasefire. It stretches back years, rooted in structural choices that have increasingly constrained India’s own room for manoeuvre.

“India effectively abandoned SAARC in the pursuit of isolating Pakistan,” said Ishtiaq Ahmad, professor emeritus of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, founded in 1985, has been effectively paralysed for years — in large part because India has refused to engage while Pakistan is at the table. India boycotted the 2016 SAARC summit in Islamabad and has blocked subsequent efforts to revive the grouping.

The collateral damage has been considerable. South Asia is today the least economically integrated region in the world, with intra-regional trade among member nations accounting for under 5 percent of their total trade, less than it was 50 years ago. The region’s people have paid a tangible price for this diplomatic deadlock.

Some analysts argue that Modi’s government went even further, pulling India back from its neighbourhood more broadly. In December 2025, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar floated the idea of a new South Asian regional bloc, one that would involve China but exclude India. That this idea could even be voiced publicly reflects how much the regional architecture has shifted.

Pakistan’s diplomatic ties with Bangladesh have also improved dramatically following the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had been seen as closely aligned with New Delhi. And Pakistan’s relationship with China, already deep before the May 2025 conflict, has grown even stronger. During the fighting, Pakistan relied on Chinese missile defence systems and jets. Xi Jinping’s reference this week to “unbreakable” ties was not a throwaway line; it was a strategic signal.

The Trump Factor

Modi had invested significant personal capital in his relationship with Trump. The two had appeared together at massive public rallies, once in Houston in 2019 and again in Ahmedabad in 2020. They met in the Oval Office in February 2025. India styled the friendship as the cornerstone of a new phase in US-India ties.

But the post-ceasefire fallout exposed how fragile that relationship had become. Trump imposed high tariffs on Indian goods and temporarily placed restrictions on India’s purchases of Russian crude oil. Images of undocumented Indian migrants being deported from the United States in shackles, broadcast widely across Indian media, shattered the narrative of a uniquely warm partnership.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited India on May 26, 2026, his first trip since taking charge as Trump’s top diplomat in January 2025, in an effort to stabilise the relationship. He signed a memorandum of understanding with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. But Rubio is not the prize India was hoping for. Modi had personally invited Trump to visit New Delhi during their June 2025 phone call. Nearly a year later, Trump has not come, even though he has visited China and indicated he would be willing to fly to Pakistan to sign a peace agreement with Iran.

India’s Congress party has been scathing. “It is abundantly clear that the substance and style of Prime Minister Modi’s regional and global engagement have failed to isolate Pakistan,” said senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh. “India needs a complete overhaul of its diplomatic engagement strategy and tactics, which Mr Modi is simply incapable of doing.”

How It All Started: From Lahore to Lockdown

It would be unfair to say Modi began with hostility towards Pakistan. He actually began with an outstretched hand and invited then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration in 2014. Modi made a surprise and warmly received visit to Lahore for the wedding of Sharif’s granddaughter. He genuinely appeared to believe that personal diplomacy could shift the relationship.

The recalibration came after a succession of devastating attacks that India blamed on Pakistan-backed armed groups: the 2016 Uri attack, the 2019 Pulwama bombing that killed 40 Indian soldiers, and eventually the 2025 Pahalgam massacre. After each attack, India raised the threshold of its response: cross-border raids in 2016, air strikes in 2019, and full-scale missile strikes in 2025.

But the hardening of India’s military posture went hand-in-hand with a diplomatic isolation strategy that ultimately had the opposite effect from what was intended. Rather than stranding Pakistan internationally, it gave Islamabad a perpetual grievance narrative, a country under siege from its larger neighbour — which resonated in parts of the Muslim world, in China, and eventually in Washington.

The Foreign Policy community’s verdict

Foreign Policy magazine was direct in its assessment. “Pakistan has outperformed India by manufacturing diplomatic relevance despite its own internal problems,” it wrote in April 2026. “This moment highlights the fragility of the US-India relationship and underscores New Delhi’s poor standing in its extended neighbourhood.”

The piece noted that Pakistan’s role as a bridge between the United States and Iran mirrored its facilitation of the US opening to China in 1971, a comparison that will sting in New Delhi. “Munir is being welcomed in capitals where Modi once expected to be consulted, if not deferred to,” it added.

The BBC noted similarly that while Modi aimed to corner Pakistan diplomatically, the outcome had been the reverse. India’s silence during the US-Iran crisis, while Pakistan stepped forward as a mediator, drew criticism from observers who saw it as a reflection of New Delhi’s blinkered focus on Islamabad rather than on constructive global engagement.

What Comes Next

The question now is whether India will recalibrate. There are quiet signs that conversations may be beginning. Al Jazeera reported on May 23 that India and Pakistan may be preparing to restart dialogue, though neither side has confirmed anything publicly.

The strategic arithmetic has changed enough that some adjustment seems unavoidable. Pakistan has demonstrated that it can punch above its economic weight through diplomatic agility. India, despite its larger economy and population, has found that brute diplomatic pressure without consistent coalition-building tends to isolate the isolator.

In the meantime, ordinary people on both sides of the border continue to live with the consequences of decisions made in distant capitals, the families of the 26 tourists killed in Pahalgam, the civilians in Muridke whose homes were reduced to rubble by Indian missiles, the soldiers on both sides who lost their lives in four days of fighting last May. Their stories rarely make it into the diplomatic briefings or the TV debates. But they are the truest measure of the cost of this decade-long strategic miscalculation.