Four days of fire and fury: The takeaways

India’s recent cross-border strikes indicate a redefinition of its strategic resolve. Moving beyond the limited scope of its earlier strikes, India chose to escalate to impose broader strategic costs on Pakistan. Targeting the terror infrastructure in depth, the strikes were intended to assert dominance without breaching critical escalatory levels. As the conflict escalated, India struck decisively at several strategic airbases and sites to compel Pakistan to de-escalate and draw this short conflict to a close.

Strategic calculus

While it might be difficult to unravel the exact compulsions driving this conflict, a few aspects are pertinent. The internal political dynamics were central to shaping the behaviour of both sides. For India, there was strong domestic pressure to act decisively, which it did. Pakistan had to forge a visible response to preserve its salience, amidst growing political fragility and instability in Balochistan. This necessitated leveraging media narratives to shape perceptions, putting the prevailing deterrence dynamic and national decision-making under immense strain.

Additionally, India's selection of initial and subsequent targets was moulded by a blend of operational considerations and the need to have a strategic effect. The initial employment of weapon platforms indicated calibrated use of force as a conscious retributive strategy, to avoid escalation. Later, when compelled by Pakistan’s counteractions, India chose to strike at its military-strategic infrastructure, indicating a transition in its retaliatory strategy. On the contrary, with grave limitations in its aerial capabilities and depth of its inventory, Pakistan was constrained to replicate India's strike profile without risking heavy degradation of aerial assets and loss of military capacity.

Besides, both militaries appear to have prioritised infrastructure with strategic or symbolic value, while consciously avoiding collateral damage that could rapidly shift public sentiment and alter international perceptions. India’s precision strikes at Muridke and Bahawalpur demonstrated its strategic reach and a transition in its strategy to target the terrorist and ideological support infrastructure, rather than merely responding to individual attacks. India’s assertive response also signalled its operational readiness and fruition of cross-domain capabilities amid unresolved border tensions in the high Himalayas.

Escalation and control

A few aspects are pertinent. From a military perspective, the non-contact kinetic dimensions of warfare are fast emerging as a key battleground. With advancing cyber and precision-standoff capabilities, the potential for disruptive attacks is high, which entails a high chance of escalation. This was on full display last week. As the risks of uncontrolled escalation increased, international mediation kicked in, with major powers calling for cessation of hostilities. Absence of any formal escalation control mechanisms further complicated de-escalation at critical junctures.

Furthermore, establishing conventional land-based superiority to address repeated acts of “aggressive opportunism” at a sub-conventional level in a nuclear backdrop is complicated. K P M Das, adjunct fellow at Takshashila Institution, argues that in such situations, dominance of the airspace, with a robust integrated air defence, acquires an influencing dimension. To some degree, this also nullifies the need to mobilise India’s ground forces. In a nuclear adversarial context, momentum and tempo of operations in the first 24 to 36 hours are crucial before external factors like information disruption, poor judgment and clumsy decision-making kick in and place constraints on control over the escalatory ladder.

More importantly, misinformation and disinformation can play an important role in escalating or de-escalating a crisis. The media narratives tend to spur the governments to up the ante, sometimes wholly unwarranted, keeping in mind the pressures of strategic planning and confidentiality, and the risks of uncontrolled escalation. The paradox, therefore, is that governments have to watch out for how to manage information and its use in the service of their broader national narrative.

Takeaways and lessons

Strategically speaking, India’s internal security choices post the ghastly terror attack are pegged at two levels. One, the denial of operating space to terror outfits in Kashmir. For this to succeed, the local balance of forces and their intrinsic capacity to deter acts of terror are vital. Two, the imposition of punitive costs. The focus of deterrence by punishment is to raise the cost of attack to levels that the perpetrator is dissuaded. Operation Sindoor demonstrated that very well; it is now time for an internal reset. A revamp of our counter-militancy structures and capability is warranted. Simply put, we have to rethink our ability to defend a commitment given to our people.

While it is too early to guess the lessons of the conflict, a few aspects stand out. First, India has set a new normal in terms of what the world thinks it can do. India struck deep this time, and if another misadventure takes place, the response is expected to be more decisive. Pakistan’s challenge will be to blunt another retaliation with inferior capacity and fewer resources at hand. India, with an economy several times the size of Pakistan, can generate an overwhelming retaliatory response in terms of scope and scale. For now, Pakistan can be expected to frantically seek greater military collaboration with its traditional partners to build a deterrent capacity.

Second, the conflict became a testing ground for rival military technologies. Pakistan, with a mix of US, Chinese and Turkish equipment, faced a wide range of Russian, French and Israeli platforms fielded by India. Like other ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, technology played a dominant role, with both sides indulging in a fitful display of firepower and their standoff capabilities. With drones, missiles, EW and surveillance platforms and air-defence systems emerging as the hot favourite, we could expect both sides to invest heavily in these to fight a controlled war.

And third, the root cause remains unaltered. Pakistan-sponsored terrorism against India will continue for the Pakistan Army to stay relevant and preeminent in its country’s politics. Any meaningful change is doubtful. That's how this hate for India is used by China to sustain this hostility, in also keeping its military at competitive levels. To negate this, India has to strengthen its security bulwark to offset these joint threats. Besides building military-industrial-technological resilience, the framework has to be rooted in its national unity, anchored in its multi-denominational identity.

Suffice it to say that the challenge of deterring Pakistan-sponsored acts of terror is indeed real. While their motivations are rooted in historical enmity, they are sometimes driven by acts of desperation. The Pahalgam attack reflects that inexplicable sense of our western adversary’s despondency and has reignited the debate on how to deter or discourage an adversarial state from provocative actions on Indian soil.

(The writer led the Indian Army’s Leh Corps during the Eastern Ladakh crisis in 2020. Earlier, as GOC North Kashmir, he steered India’s 2016 ‘surgical strikes’ and, later, served as Director General Military Intelligence during the 2019 Balakot strikes.)