May 9, 2025 ☼ The Intersection ☼ foreign policy ☼ defence ☼ geopolitics

In response to last month’s terrorist attack on Pahalgam, India conducted Operation Sindoor in the early hours of May 7th carefully targeting terrorist-related infrastructure not only in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, but in the heartland of Punjab province. Pakistan claims that its forces downed five Indian Air Force aircraft on the Indian side of boundary. Indian strikes continued yesterday, targeting air defence installations in several locations. Pakistan claims shooting down 25 drones.

Where do we go from here? The ball is in Pakistan’s court. After the first night, many expected that Islamabad will declare victory and refrain from further escalation. Now it is not clear.

In any event, the strategic significance of Operation Sindoor is that it establishes a new normal: that India will respond to Pakistani-sponsored terrorism with military force. Uri, Balakot and Sindoor are the three dots that confirm this straight line. This is a watershed for it undermines the decades-old Pakistani strategy of using its nuclear weapons as a cover to undertake proxy war and terrorism against India. The fear that any military retaliation would result in a rapid escalation to nuclear war dissuaded Indian leaders — under pressure from Western capitals — from authorising hot pursuit and punitive strikes across the boundary. It was for this reason that Indian forces were ordered not to cross the Line of Control during the Kargil War. After Sindoor, that impunity is gone. Striking the Jaish and Lashkar strongholds in Bahawalpur and Muridke warns such groups that their old havens are no longer safe.

This does not mean as some analysts claim that “deterrence has been re-established.” There was none to start off with. Deterrence is practically impossible because it would require promising a prohibitively high punishment, which is limited by the nuclear overhang. So the Pakistani military-jihadi complex will not abandon terrorism as an instrument of politics. Rather, Sindoor has raised the military, political and economic costs to the Pakistani establishment to a level that should severely discourage it from using terrorism for some period of time. They might put a brave face now, but this episode makes Pakistan’s multiple domestic crises more difficult to solve, not least because few foreign countries would want to associate with it. As for India, as I wrote in in this week’s column, preventing “cross-border terrorism is therefore a multi-dimensional, perennial, round-the-clock activity that India must doggedly persist in over the long term.”

Note that New Delhi did not attempt to gather evidence to prove that the terrorists had Pakistani origins. This departure from the absurd hope that any proof would convince the Pakistani authorities of their own complicity in terrorism also sets a new norm. No attempt was made to persuade the international community either. This approach is indicative both of India’s greater power in world politics as well as the erosion of the rules-based order of the past decades.

The new normal also commits New Delhi to the use of military force in response to a terrorist attack that is at least as serious as the one in Pahalgam. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. The military and bureaucratic establishment in New Delhi will not have to guess whether the political leadership might authorise the use of force. Such decisions will be politically easier in the future. On the flip side, it will be politically more difficult not to use the military option if the situation so demands. After the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai, for instance, I argued that India should not play into Rawalpindi’s hands by launching military strikes. Pakistan was at that time forced to employ its troops along its western border, where it was getting hammered by Pashtun militants and the United States. A war with India would have given the Pakistan army the pretext to get out of the jam. There are times when it is wiser not to hit back, and India’s prime minister should be free to exercise the best option.

Military preparedness, both in India and in Pakistan, will change to reflect the new normal. As they review their actions in Operation Sindoor, India’s armed forces will seek to improve effectiveness, efficiency and turnaround times for punitive cross-border operations based on the lessons learnt. Pakistan will do likewise, and in the process, deepen its dependence on Chinese and perhaps Turkish technology. This, in turn, will become a factor in New Delhi’s relations with Beijing and Ankara. Indeed, Turkey’s signalling during this conflict is an intrusion of a West Asian player into the subcontinent’s politics; which New Delhi will have to be manage both by engaging Ankara, and also by deepening ties with Armenia, Greece and Russia.

Let me conclude by drawing your attention to the big picture: India is prevailing in the long conflict with Pakistan because of our focus on growth, development, democracy and, when required, through the astute use of military force. We should stay the course.

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