India-Pakistan: The Intractable Conflict and the China Factor is a deeply informed exploration of one of the world’s most enduring fault lines. Drawing on nearly four decades of service in the Indian Army and first-hand experience of the 1971 war, the IPKF in Sri Lanka, and as the defender of Ladakh during the Kargil War, Maj Gen Virender Singh Budhwar offers a clear-eyed study of the subcontinent’s turbulent history and security dilemmas.

It charts Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, the rise of terrorism and its deep state, and the battles over Kashmir, while also exposing the weight of China’s growing shadow across the Himalayas. Maj Gen Budhwar traces how history, politics, and power struggles have locked the region in confrontation-as most recently in operation sindoor.

At once analytical and personal, the book draws on the vantage of a soldier-scholar who has lived through these conflicts. Maj Gen Budhwar moves beyond battlefield accounts to examine the psychology of enmity, the role of ideology, and a shifting global order, making sense of why peace has remained so elusive.

Urgent, incisive and unflinching, this book reveals why South Asia remains on the brink—as most recently seen in Operation Sindoor—and what it will take to step back.