Dr. Lauren Dagan Amos and John Spencer
For nearly a decade, India has been shedding the vocabulary of strategic restraint. The cycle of responses to major Pakistan-based terrorist attacks, including Uri in 2016, Balakot in 2019, and Pahalgam in 2025, made clear that predictable retaliation had not deterred cross-border terrorism. In fact, it enabled it. Restraint, once thought to be stabilizing, had become strategically dangerous. Predictability gave militant groups the space and time to prepare for new attacks. Eventually, Delhi’s belief that terrorism could be contained below the threshold of interstate conflict collapsed. As was made clear in Operation Sindoor, India has crossed a doctrinal threshold. It no longer responds to terrorism with calibrated warnings or waits for international partners to validate its choices. It is building a new operating logic rooted in coercive clarity and a willingness to act first when its citizens are threatened.
Indian strategic restraint was designed to prevent escalation with Pakistan. In practice, it did the opposite. Terror groups backed by Pakistan’s security agencies exploited the firebreak between terrorism and state aggression on the assumption that India would avoid decisive retaliation or cross-border action. Limited responses produced predictable patterns, and predictability invited more violence.
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