India’s reaction to the brief May 2025 clash was revealing not for what it claimed, but for how quickly its claims fell apart once confronted with independent scrutiny. Even as New Delhi rushed to brand the incident a China–Pakistan “proxy war,” the U.S.–China Economic & Security Review Commission report landed with a quiet but devastating effect: its calm, evidence-driven assessment contradicted the very premise India was shouting from every podium. That single report, unembellished and methodical, exposed a striking mismatch — India’s dramatic certainty versus the world’s measured doubt. And the louder New Delhi insisted on a foreign-engineered plot, the more its narrative sounded like a shield against its own operational lapses. In the widening gap between India’s rhetoric and the Commission’s sober conclusions, a deeper truth emerged: the region’s self-declared security provider looked less like a composed power and more like a state scrambling to hold its image together.

India’s swift claim that the May 2025 clash was a China-backed “proxy war” reads less like evidence-based analysis and more like a convenient political shield. Faced with operational setbacks on the battlefield, New Delhi leaned on a grand conspiracy narrative to deflect attention from its own lapses. Domestically, the tactic served multiple purposes: it rallied public opinion behind a narrative of external threat while shifting accountability away from military and strategic failures. Internationally,........

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