The recent discussion in Parliament with regard to India’s kinetic responses to the horrific Pahalgam terror attack of April 22 necessitated a profound examination far beyond the realm of the immediate events as they played out from that date onwards.
Unfortunately, the discussion, which should have focused on the country’s national security framework, turned out to be a political slug fest across all sides of the aisle. This deliberation should have grappled with the intricate interplay of regional instability, the enduring scourge of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, the persistent challenge of asymmetric warfare beneath a nuclear overhang and the imperative of establishing lasting deterrence amid the ominous two-front situation that India confronts.
Central to this understanding is the context provided by Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Gen. Asim Munir’s portentous address on April 15, 2025. Gen. Munir’s speech was far more than routine sabre-rattling. It was a stark manifestation of the profound existential anxieties gripping the Pakistani military establishment.
The burgeoning successes of Baloch freedom fighters represent not merely tactical setbacks but a fundamental assault on the raison d’être of the Pakistani Army, its meticulously cultivated narrative as the sole guarantor of the nation’s territorial integrity and sovereignty against the purported incompetence of civilian politicians. Yet, compounding this internal fragility was Pakistan’s unexpected elevation to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for 2025-26, a rare diplomatic opening following years of isolation.
Munir’s strident invocation of the discredited “Two-Nation Theory”, attempting to project Pakistan as a cohesive “nation” rather than the artificial colonial construct, coupled with his fervent declarations that Pakistan “will not fall”, were calculated manoeuvres. They aimed to project strength domestically while subtly preparing the ground for further consolidation of military power — a consolidation later confirmed by his elevation to Field Marshal.
The timing of the Pahalgam attack, a couple of weeks after Munir’s bellicose performance, was neither coincidental nor merely operational. It constituted a direct, state-orchestrated provocation. It served a dual purpose — externally signalling unwavering commitment to the “thousand cuts” doctrine against India, and internally, demonstrating the Army’s continued relevance as the vanguard against the perceived existential threat from India, thereby attempting to shore up its crumbling legitimacy. This attack was Munir’s doctrine in action, a brutal reaffirmation that the Pakistani deep state remains inextricably fused with terrorist proxies as instruments of state policy.
The Indian kinetic actions between May 7 and 10, 2025, targeting terrorist infrastructure across the Line of Control and the International Border, demonstrated both resolve and operational capability. It inflicted significant costs on the immediate perpetrators and their handlers. However, the perennial question persists: Is conventional retaliation efficacious against entrenched asymmetric warfare? The answer, regrettably, is a qualified no when viewed in isolation. Kinetic strikes can disrupt specific plots, eliminate active threats, and impose tactical costs, thereby serving as a necessary component of deterrence. Yet, they fundamentally fail to address the malignant core — the ideological ecosystem of radicalism nurtured within Pakistan, the institutional support structures of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the pervasive belief among significant segments of the Pakistani polity and public that terrorism constitutes a viable instrument of statecraft.
Despite decades of suffering inflicted by this policy, India has demonstrated a very high degree of resilience. However, India’s significant diplomatic and economic heft has astonishingly failed to secure universal and unequivocal isolation of Pakistan as a state sponsor of terror over the past four-and-a-half decades. This chronic diplomatic lacuna despite India’s vast potential for investment and partnership remains a critical strategic shortcoming.
This limitation underscores the critical dilemma: What space exists for conventional warfare under the omnipresent nuclear overhang? The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza offer sobering lessons. They illustrate the immense costs, protracted stalemates and global destabilisation wrought by conventional conflicts in the modern era, even absent the nuclear dimension.
The space for large-scale, sustained conventional operations between nuclear-armed adversaries is severely circumscribed. The risk of swift escalation, whether through miscalculation, desperation or loss of control, imposes a formidable threshold. The available space is narrow and exists primarily for swift, punitive actions with clearly defined objectives and exit designed to stay below the nuclear red line while delivering a sharp message.
Consequently, controlling the escalation dynamic without robust institutional off-ramps becomes paramount. De-escalation, while always a possibility, cannot be predicated on vague goodwill or international pressure alone. It must be anchored in hard-nosed national interest. Any diplomatic off-ramp India contemplates must yield tangible, verifiable gains for its security — irreversible actions against terrorist infrastructure, demonstrable dismantling of proxy networks, or credible steps towards normalisation predicated on Pakistan’s abandonment of terrorism as policy. The strategic response must transcend the binary of conventional retaliation versus passive endurance.
India’s kinetic actions while tactically successful in eliminating immediate threats and demonstrating capability, cannot singularly establish permanent deterrence. The “mowing the grass” analogy is apt; the ideological and infrastructural roots of terrorism in Pakistan remain intact, requiring periodic kinetic pruning to prevent overgrowth.
However, sustainable security demands a far more comprehensive, multi-domain strategy. India must wield its formidable economic and diplomatic power with relentless determination to isolate Pakistan internationally.
This involves a sophisticated dual-track approach — the positive projection of Indian soft power (sports, cinema, music, OTT, gaming) and economic might (displacing Pakistani exports like rice, wheat, textiles) across global markets; and the negative diplomatic campaign to systematically exclude Pakistan from international fora — sporting bodies, climate initiatives, meteorological cooperation, cultural exchanges and financial action task force. The goal is to render Pakistan a pariah state, suffocating its economy and diminishing its global standing.
Simultaneously, India must leverage its technological superiority to dominate emerging battlefields. Cyber warfare offers a potent, deniable tool to disrupt Pakistani state functions, military logistics and propaganda machinery. More radically, India must develop and signal credible capabilities for space warfare — the ability to degrade or destroy Pakistan’s limited military, spy, communication and agricultural satellites. This represents a paradigm shift, threatening fundamental national utilities without crossing the nuclear threshold immediately. While extreme, it underscores the necessity of imposing costs that threaten the very foundations of the Pakistani state’s ability to function, aligning with New Delhi’s doctrine that there is no distinction between the Pakistani state and its terrorist proxies. India’s edge in these domains must be cultivated and communicated clearly.
The decision to put the Indus River Waters Treaty (IWT) has significant backing in international legal precedent and, therefore, must be pursued, too, to a logical conclusion.
The parliamentary discussion should thus have recognised and seriously deliberated upon the reality that while robust conventional responses are necessary and demonstrate vital resolve, they are insufficient alone. Lasting security requires a relentless, multi-generational campaign combining calibrated kinetic actions to degrade immediate capabilities, unrelenting diplomatic and economic isolation to cripple Pakistan’s capacity and legitimacy, dominance in the cyber and space domains to control escalation and impose asymmetric costs, and an unwavering commitment to intelligence-led pre-emption.