A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/op-sindoor-how-we-won-and-lost-3566189

There are no clear wins in wars these days, especially when terrorizing populations, or nuclear blackmail, is the goal. Pakistan’s war manual may well be The Quranic Concept of War (1979) by Brigadier S K Malik, with its pithy statement: “Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end itself… Terror is not a means of imposing a decision on the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose on him.” Notably, this book has a forward from General Zia-ul-Haq, their then President.

In War From the Ground Up (2012), Emile Simpson, a former British Army officer, argues that modern wars often lack binary outcomes due to their political and informational complexity. Thus you could both win and lose a war, and that’s what Operation Sindoor’s outcome is.

On the plus side, India won a clear military victory. India leveraged its integrated air defense, long-range missiles, global positioning satellites and drone decoy technology to achieve aerial dominance. This enabled India to make pinpoint strikes, unchallenged, first on terrorist enclaves, and then on Pakistani military sites, including, it is said, nuclear storage silos.

India surprised most observers, because it was not only through expensive imported fighter jets that it deprecated Pakistan’s offensive capabilities, but also indigenous drones, loitering munitions and cruise missiles. India needs strategic autonomy, because foreign suppliers, and supply chains, are not dependable. They keep the kill switches, and can turn off the spigot.

India may well have ushered in a step-change in modern warfare itself, an age where drones and missiles tilt the balance rather than fighter jets, although the latter continue to remain key. Maybe it is sufficient to have slightly less advanced jets like the Tejas and the upcoming AMCA rather than procuring top-end F-35s, Su-57s etc. But there is a caveat: fighter jet engines. India must get its Kaveri engine working, for self-reliance.

India also established strategic red lines: terrorist attacks will henceforth invite disproportionate and military retaliation because there is a military-terrorist nexus, with Pakistani soldiers cosplaying as terrorists, exchanging uniforms for long shirts, loose pants and beards, as a way of sub-critical harassment with plausible deniability.

Furthermore, Pakistan’s nuclear threat has been defanged. India’s ability to hit their nuclear command center and two of the entrances to their storage facility in the Kirana Hills, suggest that their nuclear assets, if any, are disabled. Besides, there are rumors that warheads are not in Pakistani hands, but American or Chinese. That stands to reason, because otherwise Pakistan would likely have proliferated them to Iran, Turkey and non-state actors such as Hamas.

So what are the negatives? The biggest is that this skirmish has not put even a dent in Pakistan’s use of terrorism as state policy. Indeed, the next encounter with terrorists has already taken place in Kishtwar on May 22nd, exactly one month after Pahalgam, with one Indian soldier killed. Terrorism and war with India continue to be the raison d’etre of the Pakistani state.

India comprehensively lost the narrative war. Operation Sindoor is portrayed in the Western media on Pakistan’s terms (including the usual bogey of ‘nuclear war’), and their claims of shooting down 5-6 Indian jets are accepted as the truth. Many Pakistanis are embedded in Western media outlets, and that is not accidental. As they say, you can wake up a sleeping person, but not someone who is pretending to be asleep.

In that sense, the all-party delegation visiting various capitals is an exercise in futility, because the West is not interested in India becoming a peer-level competitor: the G2 with China is bad enough, who wants a G3 with India as well? Also, just as the EAM told Europe that their (Ukraine) problem is a European problem, the West sees India’s problems as not theirs.

Pakistan’s ability to internationalize the issue is a failure for India’s stance that Kashmir is a bilateral issue. Fortunately, nobody actually cares, including the UN or its Security Council.

A major failure for India was that it could have, but did not, capture any territory, which would have been a devastating blow to Pakistan’s amour propre, and would have made “Field Marshal” Munir a laughing stock. India errs on the side of caution, and a large-scale intrusion does have problems with hostile civilians and stretched supply lines.

But surely the Haji Pir Pass could have been recaptured: it was needlessly given away in Tashkent in 1966. It is a major route of infiltration for terrorists, its commanding heights dominate Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and it cuts the Uri-Poonch distance from 282km to 56km.

Alas, a resounding military victory has been morphed into a stalemate.

795 words, May 27, 2025

AI-generated podcast from notebookLM.google.com:

Now AI-generated podcast in Malayalam from the same:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe