As much as Pakistan would like a joint Air-Land war against India, it won't solve China's actual strategic dilemma, which exists not on the high mountains, but on the high seas. Things are moving in the right direction here, with the US continually getting weaker, but the IN has an inherent advantage due to its placement on the map, directly threatening China's sea lines of communication, even without the USN:
There's still a lot of variables here and lots of different ways this game can play out. The goal of all strategy is to keep increasing your set of options, while reducing your opponent's options, until you corner them. At that point, you can go for the kill or force a diplomatic win. The Air-Land threat to India is just one move. The more resources India spends on its Army/Airforce, the less it has left to spend on its Navy. I expect that the Air-Land showdown will probably happen between Pakistan and India, without China getting
directly involved, because of the complicated Naval dimension.. But you never know how it will play out in 10+ years. China and Pakistan are integrating their battle-systems, so the option for a joint-war is being stood-up. It never hurts to have more options.
India has zero viable naval options to try to threaten Chinese sea trade through the Indian Ocean because the flag flown by merchant ships have almost no bearing on who owns their cargo or their destination.
The sheer volume of commercial shipping going through the Indian Ocean would make a mockery of even the USN’s attempt to cut off trade to a power like China through there. Which your chart demonstrates well
With the nature of modern commerce, the only way anyone could even hope of cutting sea based trade is through control of geographical choke points. That was why the US was so interested in trying to get its vassals to seize islands in the SCS.
Other than the odd ship they might seize for PR purposes, any Indian attempt to interfere with Chinese sea based trade going through the Indian Ocean will either be spectacularly useless, or they will incur the wrath of the entire world if they made the Indian Ocean a no-go area for all commercial shipping. In which case, they will suddenly realise the true strategy value of Diego Garcia.
America cannot tolerant any possible challengers to their primacy, and Diego Garcia serves as its insurance in case India actually ever amount to much, or steps way out of line.
Even China could easily defeat any Indian attempts at messing with Chinese sea based trade with just a few SSNs.
All of China’s subs are capable of undersea mine laying. It can have a few SSNs lay entire minefields in Indian waters and the first the Indians would know of them would be when one of their ships runs into one.
Chinese SSNs don’t even need to directly attack IN ships to effectively cut off Indian sea based trade. China merely declaring a free fire zone and notifying the world of its mine laying in Indian waters will kill off all Indian sea based international trade overnight.
Ships merely going through the Indian Ocean can easily steer well clear of the danger zone.
As such, India starting a new naval front with China is about the worst thing it could possible do short of launch an ineffective nuclear strike.
India has little hope to even do noticeable damage to Chinese sea based trade, while the PLAN can easily counter blockade India without needing to deploy much in the way of assets, and can operate with a high degree of safety given poor India ASW and counter-mine capabilities.
While there is a risk of the USN helping the Indians with detection and tracking of PLAN SSNs especially, I show how doubt they will be in the mood to do so if India kicked it all off by trying to disrupt international trade in the Indian Ocean. The Indians would be lucky if the USN isn’t sinking their warships for lolz in response to such a brain damaged move.
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