Major Gaurav Arya Picks His Winner From The West Asia Conflict — And It’s Not Iran, America, Or Israel.

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Bengaluru, India, Karnataka, 11th of April, 2026 : The real winner of the West Asia conflict is China, Major Gaurav Arya said at Kotak Private Banking’s Take and Counter Take (TACT), arguing that Beijing is extracting strategic gains without firing a shot. Speaking at the invitation-only forum curated by Kotak Private, Arya told the audience that while attention remains fixed on Israel, Iran and the United States, China is accruing advantage quietly and methodically. “Everyone is looking at Israel, Iran and the United States,” he said, “but the country that actually benefits is China.” The conflict, he added, fits into a longer, colder struggle in which China exploits instability to weaken rivals, tighten its grip over energy routes, and stretch Western focus across too many theatres at once.

That advantage, Arya warned during the TACT session moderated by Kotak AMC managing director Nilesh Shah, exposes India’s own vulnerabilities. China, he said, has spent three decades building manufacturing scale, logistics depth and military capacity without distraction, while India has relied too heavily on goodwill and moral positioning. “They kept quiet, they kept building their economy, and one day people woke up to realise they had the biggest navy in the world,” Arya said. For India, the implication was blunt. “You need massive manufacturing at a massive level,” he said, adding that without industrial scale, military ambition and strategic autonomy remain slogans rather than capability.

The second edition of Take and Counter Take paired Arya with economist Neelkanth Mishra to examine whether India’s growth story can remain resilient amid geopolitical shocks. Shah steered the discussion away from headlines and towards consequence, pressing the panel on what prolonged conflict means for capital flows, supply chains, security and state capacity. Mishra set the economic frame, arguing that India is better prepared today than in past crises, while Arya focused on the security externalities that balance sheets and market models tend to underweight.

‘India must brace for more terror attacks’

Those externalities, Arya said, will not stay confined to West Asia. He was unequivocal on blowback. “There will be 100% more terror attacks,” he said. “Lone wolf attacks, sleeper cells — in India, in Europe, in America. This is inevitable.” Modern wars, he argued, do not end at borders but diffuse through networks, ideology and proxies, pulling distant countries into the arc of violence whether they choose it or not.

For India, that reality sharpens the case for hard choices at home. Arya returned repeatedly to defence expenditure, calling current levels inadequate for the risks ahead. “If the Prime Minister asked me for one recommendation, it would be this,” he said. “Defence has to be at 3.5% of GDP. There is no other way.” Moral authority, he added, does not substitute for deterrence. “There is no friendship without fear,” Arya said, arguing that the ability to project power — economic, diplomatic and military — determines whether a country shapes events or absorbs their fallout.

His warning circled back to China. Beijing, Arya said, is willing to absorb pain, invest patiently and exploit asymmetry, whether through choke points, supply chains or proxy conflict. India, by contrast, still treats strength as episodic rather than systemic. “China will not let you survive by goodwill alone,” he said. “They respect power. That power comes from industry, from defence manufacturing, from economic strength.”

India, Arya said, still has the window to act, provided it aligns growth, manufacturing and securityjt as parts of the same strategy. The West Asia conflict, in his telling, is less a distant war than a rehearsal for the kind of disorder that will define the coming decade. “The world is not structured anymore,” he said. “If you are not prepared, you will pay the price.”