In a report released in Washington on 22 November, longtime observers noted that India has been moving away from a decade‑old posture of “strategic restraint.” The country’s measured replies to major cross‑border attacks—such as those in Uri (2016), Balakot (2019), and Pahalgam (2025)—have come to reveal, as analysts argued on Saturday, an unavoidable shift in policy.
Executive Director at the U.S.‑based Urban Warfare Institute, John Spencer, and international security scholar Lauren Dagan Amoss warned that the predictable, limited responses India launched against Pakistani‑backed terror cells have, paradoxically, facilitated future attacks rather than stymied them. They argued that the once‑lauded restraint, intended to keep tensions low, had become a strategic liability. By behaving in a calculable way, militant groups could read India’s playbook and time their strikes, thereby disproving the notion that terrorism could be capped just below the level of interstate war.
Spencer and Amoss wrote, in an article titled “The End of Old Assumptions: What India’s New Security Paradigm Actually Looks Like,” that Operation Sindoor marked a decisive doctrinal break. “India is no longer a state that pens calibrated warnings or waits for international partners to validate its choices,” they say. The operation did not create the change; it made it visible. The new mindset is built on decisive force and a readiness to act first when citizens are threatened.
“Strategic restraint was meant to deter escalation with Pakistan, but in reality it backfired,” the piece adds. “The space that emerged between terrorist activity and state reaction was simply a firebreak that the Pakistan‑linked groups leaned on. India’s limited, predictable reactions provided a template for more violence.”
The experts point out that the counter‑terrorism doctrine has matured into a state‑driven policy that treats proxy groups as tools of national strategy. India’s zero‑tolerance framework now targets not only overt attacks but also the entire supporting ecosystem—retainers, financiers, and logistics that keep these groups alive.
A subtler point is that Pakistan isn’t the only audience for India’s moves. “Signals aimed at Pakistan inevitably echo to Beijing,” they note. During Operation Sindoor, India intercepted Chinese‑origin PL‑15 missiles and successfully neutralised Chinese‑supplied air‑defence systems, harvesting key data on Chinese weapon design and weaknesses. This informs a deterrence logic fashioned for a two‑front reality, where any action on one side reverberates on the other.
In sum, the picture that emerges is of a nation reshaping itself under pressure. “India isn’t acting recklessly; it’s becoming coherent—aligning doctrine, public expectation, defence industry output, and diplomatic messaging around a single principle,” the authors conclude. “Security will be derived from India’s own actions and principles, not handed over through external mediation or trapped by outdated assumptions.”
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