Operation Sindoor: Operation Sindoor launched in response to a terror carnage on April 22, 2025, has redefined India’s politico-military strategy in terms of its scope, intensity, ferocity, and escalation matrix. It displays a tectonic shift in military retribution leading to a paradigm shift in foreign policy across domains that exemplified its oft-touted policy of Strategic Autonomy in all its dimensions, propelling India into a new orbit of global superpowers. In the regional and tactical domain, this moment is a testament to India’s unflinching resolve and strength to deal with cross-border terrorism.
The lethality of the four-day onslaught exceeded any previous kinetic response, addressing specific targets in the adversary’s strategic depth including Pakistan’s strategic airfields, which in effect is a calibrated increase in the scope and depth of engagement. The scale of devastation of terror strongholds and strategic assets of Pakistan seems unprecedented prompting a call for an immediate ceasefire.
As the fragile cessation of firing and military action in land, air and sea came into effect on May 10, Indian armed forces clearly dictated the escalation ladder with Pakistan seeking peace. The cessation of hostilities at the behest of the adversary marks not just the end of a confrontation, but the emergence of a new strategic doctrine — one that signals India’s rise as a formidable, self-assured power, capable of defending its sovereignty with precision, purpose, and poise.
The New Normal
Unlike the shadows of prolonged wars of death and destruction witnessed in Ukraine and Gaza, leaving behind monumental ruins and generations of sorrow, India acted with unmistakable resolve and calibrated precision only to avenge the heinous terrorist carnage resulting in the barbaric slaying of 26 innocent tourists in Baisaran Valley. In the annals of history, India’s response was far beyond the normal. It was a decisive trans-border attack based on hard intelligence executed with precision that was a notch higher than previous responses, aimed at terrorist and military assets which may have included a few perceived nuclear storage sites as well. It was a marked departure from the past and one that fundamentally propounded India’s aggressive retaliatory posture unmindful of an escalation to a full-blown conventional confrontation.
From the strategic perspective, Operation Sindoor was a sharp, clear, and unambiguous message to Pakistan. It was obvious that for the first time since 1971, Pakistan felt the full weight of Indian strength beyond contested borders. The myth of impunity for terror proxies and nuclear sabre rattling has been shattered
From a strategic perspective, it was no mere military operation but a message to Pakistan — sharp, clear, and unambiguous. It was obvious that for the first time since 1971, Pakistan felt the full weight of Indian strength beyond contested borders. The myth of impunity for terror proxies and nuclear sabre rattling has been shattered. India did not just retaliate, it redefined the rules of engagement amplifying the dictum that any future armed provocation will be prohibitively unbearable and that the world needs to take note of the fact that India will not provoke, but will neither tolerate nor renege its constitutional responsibility and shall never be afraid to walk through fire to secure it.
This response is now the New Normal under full international glare. Moving forward, the swift recourse to a cessation of military actions at the behest of Pakistan was a testament to India’s strategic maturity and humanitarian restraints that arrived after achieving the stated politico-military objectives. The supervened doctrine as a consequence was India’s firm stand of treating any terrorist incident as an act of war and the response shall be as such.
The Lull
While the eerie silence along the frontiers between the two states lingers, it is just a temporary pause. Hence, it would be naive to assume that Operation Sindoor will usher in lasting peace or expect Pakistan to refrain from fostering trans-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy. That apart, the fiery speech by Pakistan Army Chief Gen (now Field Marshal) Asim Munir reinvoking the postulates of the two-nation theory and espousing a national commitment to the people of Kashmir, only speaks of the deep routed ideological animosity and unhealed scars of Partition. Therefore, as a face-saving measure, the Pakistan Government and the Army’s recourse to promoting the Army Chief to the rank of ‘Field Marshal’ are visible signs to suggest the obvious. In fact, the fierce propaganda and false narratives of its military successes across all media platforms speak of national desperation. Hence, it will sooner or later embark on misadventures in India to buttress their rhetoric of a victory that was never unfounded.
However, in the current engagement, the fundamental intrigue is why Pakistan indulged in this heinous misadventure at a time when its internal security, political and economic situation is extremely precarious. Many security analysts have cited reasons chiefly as, Pakistan’s attempt to sabotage the notion of normalcy returning to the Valley, restore international attention to the disputed nature of the territory, and externalise its own socio-political and economic implosion at home.
That apart, the Pakistan army, which had assumed the reputation of a unifying force, has progressively lost credibility and legitimacy under the ideologically deranged Asim Munir, after the incarceration of its most popular political leader Imran Khan, and uncontrolled unrest in Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and POK. Unconfirmed reports of the death of Imran Khan, the former Prime Minister, in custody is a matter of grave concern and one that will rattle the current political dispensation and the military.
What Next?
Given the politico-military environment that is pregnant with uncertainty, humiliation and mistrust between Pakistan’s leadership and the masses, expecting Pakistan to remain dormant and not avenge this humiliation would be an understatement. There shall be a repeat – only the location and scale may be ambiguous. Therefore, India’s counter-strike strategy needs to be Hobson’s choice of either reactive or proactive. Reactive justifies India’s punitive action while proactive may lead to escalation including a nuclear response by a rogue state.
Nonetheless, whatever the choice, the kinetic retribution against terror outfits and their perpetrators must be swift and intense blurring the fundamental distinction between sub-conventional and conventional aggression. The concept of strategic restrain, hesitancy, and ambiguity should be replaced by strategic assertion, clarity and precision.
Under this climate of India’s assertive autonomy, the role of world powers in advising restraint and pursuing the course of dialogue has been relegated to the background with most of the G5 nations remaining non-committal if not supportive. However, Trump in his quest for political showmanship has made a veiled reference to his conciliatory efforts to broker the current ceasefire. India’s firm retort has forced him to tone down his claim.
That apart, a new axis seems to emerge consisting of China, Pakistan and Turkey including Azerbaijan who have expressed their solidarity with Pakistan. The US on the contrary seems to be non-committal except to encourage and fester a military hardware market thus remaining out of the ring so to speak, while Russia, a trusted long-term ally of India, has strong leanings towards China. Under the circumstances, the South Asian power play will be interesting to observe how it unfolds.
At the international level, India has to be vociferously vocal in exposing Pakistan’s fraudulent diversion of a large part of IMF’s economic bailout on militarisation against India. Inadvertently, it is tantamount to terror funding, which is grossly against its principles and primary objectives
The Road Ahead
The very survival of Pakistan as a nation is premised on its belligerency towards India on the basis of Kashmir. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the US Defense Department, in its World-Wide Threat Assessment report for 2025, has said that Pakistan sees India as an ‘existential threat’. On the contrary, India regards Pakistan as an ‘ancillary security problem’ while China remains its ‘primary threat’. Whereas, the Pakistani army continues to pursue its military modernisation effort, “including a notch higher in the development of battlefield nuclear weapons” to offset India’s conventional military advantage. Coincidentally, in a dramatic escalation of global military tensions, Russia seems to be flexing its nuclear capabilities by equipping fighter Jets Su-57 with mach 6 air-to-air nuclear missiles, a variant of R-37M missile, seems to spark a global alarm over hypersonic “First-Strike Capability”.
Axiomatically it will only be a matter of time before Pakistan will fill capability voids with these missiles through its China connection. In the interim, it is unlikely that Pakistan will cease to perpetuate terrorism in India in view of its subservience to jihadist proxies and its ease of perpetrating proxy war. That apart, the internal dynamics of Pakistan are abysmally low and the country is on the brink of an economic collapse but for external monetary support. The secessionist outcry by the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) and a reversionary trend by POK are recipes for the collapse of Pakistan as a nation.
Under these circumstances, the retributory actions by Pakistan and its Armed Forces can be explosive and diversionary as long as the Army plays an overarching role in its governance. Hence, this articulation must be seriously taken note of given the fact that India of late has accelerated its ‘Act East policy’ in all its dimensions. At the international level, India has to be vociferously vocal in exposing Pakistan’s fraudulent diversion of a large part of IMF’s economic bail-out on militarisation against India. Inadvertently it is tantamount to terror funding which is grossly against its principles and primary objectives. Therefore, it is for the global community to take note that this pipeline of disproportionate funding over decades has made no meaningful improvement in the economic stature of Pakistan, instead it has been squandered over military modernisation and abject corruption. This must stop forthwith and should be carefully calibrated on a need basis with a very strict monitoring apparatus in place.
Therefore, India must remain vigilant and in the event of a recurrence of a terror strike, employ all elements of national power to impose punitive costs that are extremely prohibitive and self-defeating for Pakistan. As the PM said in his address on May 12, 2025, India will decide the scale, location (including roots) and intensity of its future responses on its own terms. The response to a terrorist attack will no longer be based on the elimination of terrorists but will include its linkages to perpetrators and infrastructure across the LoC/border at the cost of escalation to a conventional conflict. The new normal is therefore a declaratory compulsion of using military power across the LOC/IB as a response to any future terrorist action on Indian soil. The world must take serious note of this paradigm.
Dynamics in the Valley
While the new doctrine of response has been clearly articulated, the efforts to consolidate the socio-economic gains made thus far must not be retarded. The Central and state governments must crank their machinery to reinvigorate and revitalise the climate of normalcy in the Valley that was shattered by this carnage. It is no doubt an uphill task but has to be instituted by way of visible deployment of CAPF (Central Armed Police Force) in instilling confidence besides assuring a high degree of physical security. Coupled with this is the recalibration of a strong non-porous counter-terrorism grid by regular security forces necessitating additional deployment. Under the current dispensation of no war no peace, this security framework should not be diluted for petty political gains. The necessity is not to appease domestic/internal dynamics of governance but to ensure a strong deterrence against external inimical forces, be it non-state actors or the Pakistan Army.
In addition, the fundamental social fabric that has undergone a radical change over the past couple of years must be strengthened. Kashmiri society, particularly the youth, is clearly showing signs of disengagement from violent extremism. Job aspirations, digital connectivity, and tourism have altered the local economic structure. The government’s unambiguous long-term objective of irreversible integration of the Kashmiri society through a mix of security control, economic development, and information dominance must not be slowed down. The government’s ability to maintain calm in the face of a crisis of this magnitude is a testimony to this perceptual change in the Valley.
Under Trumpism, the world is turning into a dark, fretful, and more dangerous place where treaties and laws are no longer respected, alliances are broken, trust is fungible, principles are negotiable and morality is a dirty word. This is an ugly and disordered world of raw power, brute force, selfish arrogance, dodgy deals, and brazen lies
In addition, efforts must be taken to prevent any hyphenation between India and Pakistan, even while keeping the POK narrative intact albeit at the cost of preventing any plebiscite that Pakistan will attempt to shore up at the international level. It is in this context that the all-party delegations sent across the globe will be able to state the obvious in its truest profile while highlighting the insidious and heinous actions of Pakistan both internally in Baluchistan, KPK and POK and externally against India, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the neighbourhood.
Battling the Axis of Chaos
The tacit support to Pakistan in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor needs deliberation. Regional dynamics have always remained extremely volatile with two traditional belligerent neighbours. This stand precipitated with Bangladesh joining the fray. Militarily it may be inconsequential but an unstable neighbour with its growing proximity to China will be a cause for concern. That apart, the larger threat matrix is the socio-military support of Turkey to Pakistan and its ideology of Islamic brotherhood goes beyond the bilateral engagement between them. China on the other hand has been a strong patron of Pakistan to counter India in more than one way. Its Belt and Road initiative has common grounds with Pakistan and Turkey, the latter being the gateway to Europe.
It clearly outlines an evolving tripartite alignment between Communist China, Islamist Turkey, and a militarised Pakistan. It symbolises a symbiotic emergence of a Strategic Convergence of an Islamic-Communist Axis. This emerging ‘Islamic-Communist Axis’ is driven not just by shared ideology but also by a converging strategic ambition to restrain India’s ascent, erode the Western-dominated global order, and assert the rising stature of China as the next alternative to the US.
This theoretical alignment has now manifested into concrete cooperation across nuclear, defence, ideological, and economic domains. China provides the required funding, technology, and weapons, Turkey delivers ideological legitimacy and drone warfare capabilities, and Pakistan, the weakest but the most dangerous player, serves as the operational theatre for proxy wars against India and elsewhere in the world. The operationalisation of the rail link between China and Iran is a game changer in trade between the two countries. Its power play will slowly but surely manifest in the regional dynamics in the near terms, although India does enjoy favourable relations with Iran.
With reliable partners like Russia, Israel, and France, and a growing arsenal of home grown weapons and doctrine, backed by a surging industrial economy, India is poised to not only withstand the Axis of Chaos, which includes China, Pakistan and Turkey, but to dismantle it when required
Muddled in this axis of chaos, Washington remains duplicitous. The fact remains that the world’s most admired democracy is being held hostage by a clique of far-right wingers led by a fanatic whose financial clout and bitter racial insinuation brought him to the White House despite a federal conviction, unprecedented in American History. Under Trumpism the world is being turned into a dark, fretful, and more dangerous place where treaties and laws are no longer respected, alliances are broken, trust is fungible, principles are negotiable and morality is a dirty word. On the global stage, it is an ugly, disordered world of raw power, brute force, selfish arrogance, dodgy deals and brazen lies. It is a shameless imposition on hot spots across the globe mired in potential trade wars precipitating a recipe for disaster. That the US President’s tenets of his campaign trail on ending the bitter wars in Ukraine and Gaza have failed is an American embarrassment and sheer frustration on display. Trump’s recent gigantuous three-nation tour of the Middle East was a raw display of his fetish for glitter and gold-seeking personal business investments followed by American interest. An unfeeling and irresponsible man who cares nothing for his people except to see them merely as an audience for his vulgar showmanship and display of power.
In a world where human values have plummeted and institutions compromised, India’s path forward lies in strong military deterrence, self-reliance, and stoic strategic autonomy. Its economic stature as the fourth largest economy will foster credibility in a chaotic world order. With reliable partners like Russia, Israel, and France, and a growing arsenal of home grown weapons and doctrine, backed by a surging industrial economy, India is poised to not only withstand the axis of chaos but to dismantle it when required. The age of strategic ambiguity is over. India rises not just as a regional power, but as a sovereign pole in a multipolar world. India’s response to the Pahalgam terror strike has proven that this axis while being dangerous, is not infallible and retains the propensity to script its history and redefine global power balance.
–The writer is a former GOC of the Indian Army and presently serves as a Strategic Consultant and Principal Advisor. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
–The writer is a former GOC of the Indian Army and presently serves as a Strategic Consultant and Principal Advisor. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
