Entangled Militarisms: The “Balakot Airstrike” and Circulating Technologies of Violence in/between India and Israel

Abstract In February 2019, Indian warplanes struck so-called terrorist camps in Pakistan in what became known as the “Balakot airstrike.” A key feature of this episode was the use and legitimation of Israeli-origin and -supplied technologies of violence by Indian actors who proudly proclaimed India’s likeness to Israel. This article focuses on the Balakot airstrike to examine the understudied relations between Indian and Israeli militarisms. Responding to Eurocentric and methodological nationalist tendencies in scholarship on militarism and the arms trade, this article advances the concept of entangled militarisms to characterize the role of Israel in Balakot and the India–Israel relationship more broadly. This concept places emphasis on four aspects of militarism, recognizing it as transnational, processual, constituted through discourse-materiality, and forming broader assemblages of violent ordering. Through this lens, I map an expansion in recent years of India and Israel’s arms trade, partnerships in weapons development and manufacturing, and security personnel trainings. Locating it within these transnational processes of the production, circulation, use, and legitimation of technologies of violence, the Balakot airstrike is understood as a moment of intensifying entanglements of militarisms. This, in turn, illuminates how entangled militarisms in/between India and Israel are constitutive of a wider assemblage of violent global ordering.