NEW DELHI: India’s Operation Sindoor marked a decisive shift in its counter-terrorism doctrine not merely as a retaliatory action, but as a calculated strategy of cost escalation designed to deal with cross-border terrorism.
By striking terrorist infrastructure deep within Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), India signalled that cross-border terrorism would no longer be tolerated without a tangible and rising price.
Indian officials termed the strikes measured, proportionate, and non-escalatory, making clear the intent was anything but a return to business as usual with Pakistan. The goal was to establish a new normal—one in which India responds decisively and with strategic clarity to every provocation, raising the cost for Pakistan’s use of terror proxies and resetting expectations for international actors accustomed to Indian restraint. But the question remains: what would constitute the threshold for retaliatory military action?
As explained by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on 7 May, India’s Operation Sindoor was guided by three core objectives: to prevent further terrorist activity, to deter the use of cross-border proxies by Pakistan-based terror groups, and to pre-empt specific threats identified through intelligence.
This framework aligns with a growing strategic shift in New Delhi’s security thinking: limited, intelligence-led, and politically integrated operations that send a long-term message to Pakistan and the international community alike. The trigger for Operation Sindoor came on 22 April, when terrorists trained and armed in Pakistan operating under the cover name The Resistance Front (TRF), a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) offshoot carried out a brutal attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, killing 26 civilians.
New Delhi told international interlocutors that the massacre represented a continuation of Pakistan’s longstanding policy of waging proxy war through non-state actors with deep state support and responded with calibrated force.
The Indian Air Force launched strikes on 7 May, hitting pre-identified terror launchpads and infrastructure in PoK and Pakistani territory. Within 25 minutes, the primary military objective neutralising those assets was achieved. However, as officials emphasised, the operation’s value lay as much in its political and psychological messaging as in its tactical results. “India exercised its right to respond, to pre-empt, as well as to deter... These actions were measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible,” Misri said on 7 May.
Misri’s statement reflects India’s deliberate positioning avoiding escalation while refusing passivity. New Delhi sought to demonstrate that it can act with precision and restraint while still fundamentally altering the cost-benefit equation for Pakistan.
“The actions taken by India are aimed at creating and setting a new normal in the relationship. It is not business as usual. Pakistan and the world will have to get used to this new normal because India has had enough,” a source explained.
This “new normal” involves using all instruments of statecraft, including military action, diplomatic messaging, and resource leverage. A key element of this pressure is the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), a long-standing agreement that India now links directly to cross-border terrorism.
The cost of terrorism has risen. India has linked the Indus Waters Treaty to cross-border terror and will suspend cooperation under it as long as Pakistan backs terrorism. Islamabad cannot expect selective engagement terror and cooperation cannot coexist.
This marks a strategic inflection point: India is no longer treating terrorism as a standalone security problem, but as a foundational obstacle to normal bilateral relations. Cooperation in areas like water, trade, and even fuller diplomatic engagement is now explicitly conditional on Pakistan ending support for terror.
Following India’s 7 May strikes, Pakistan retaliated with attacks on Indian military installations on 8, 9, and 10 May. These prompted graduated Indian responses, which initially focused on defensive measures but soon escalated to offensive counter-strikes against Pakistani military infrastructure.
By 10 May, Pakistan had launched what Indian officials described as its “most ambitious and wide-ranging attacks,” prompting a forceful Indian response. The Indian Air Force retaliated with precision strikes on eight major Pakistani airbases, including Chaklala, Rafiqui, Murid, Rahim Yar Khan, Chunian, and Sialkot. The damage was significant, with sources confirming that the runway at the Rahim Yar Khan airbase was devastated, impairing Pakistan’s operational capabilities. “These strikes sent a clear message: if Pakistan escalates, India will respond in kind—but on its own terms, and with calibrated intensity,” pointed out a source.
However, this approach brings heightened international scrutiny, particularly from countries such as the United States.
US President Donald Trump’s recurring comments about mediating in Kashmir are viewed as deeply problematic. There is also concern that the growing visibility of India’s military responses could draw unwanted conflation between counter-terrorism and other bilateral issues. But Indian policymakers maintain that terrorism is not a bilateral issue—it is a global security threat, and India has the right to act against it, like anyone else.
Indian officials maintain that Operation Sindoor achieved all its intended objectives military, political, and psychological. Terror infrastructure was hit, and Pakistan’s cost for backing terrorism was raised.
