- India is shifting from restraint to assertive pre-emption in its national security doctrine
- Past calibrated responses to Pakistan-based terrorism failed to deter attacks effectively
- Operation Sindoor demonstrated India's use of deep strikes and drone swarms as new deterrence tools
India is undergoing a profound transformation in its national security posture, replacing decades of predictable restraint with a far more assertive doctrine rooted in pre-emption, coercive leverage, and strategic autonomy.
In a new analysis, military scholar John Spencer and foreign policy expert Dr Lauren Dagan Amoss said the country has crossed a "doctrinal threshold" that is reshaping deterrence in South Asia.
For years, India's calibrated responses to major Pakistan-based terrorist attacks - Uri in 2016, Balakot in 2019, and Pahalgam in 2025 - operated under the assumption that restraint would prevent escalation.
Instead, as Spencer and Amoss write, "limited and predictable retaliation had not deterred cross-border terrorism. It had enabled it." Predictability created "space to prepare the next attack," ultimately making restraint itself a strategic liability.
Operation Sindoor, launched this year after another high-casualty assault, exposed the depth of India's doctrinal shift.
The authors state unequivocally: "India has crossed a doctrinal threshold. It is no longer a state that responds to terrorism with calibrated warnings or waits for international partners to validate its choices."
The campaign featured deep strikes, drone swarms, loitering munitions, and precision long-range fires - evidence of an approach in which "pre-emption is considered a sovereign right."
Crucially, this shift is not temporary.
"This evolution is institutional, not episodic," the authors note, emphasizing that India's deterrence is now "pattern-based rather than event-based," influenced as much by national sentiment as by strategic imperatives.
Public expectations for swift retaliation have become a binding political force, narrowing the space for restraint.
John Spencer is the Chair of War Studies at the Madison Policy Forum and Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute. He is the coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.
Dr Lauren Dagan Amoss is an academic expert on India's foreign and security policy, with a specialization in deterrence, nuclear doctrine, and India-Pakistan crisis dynamics. She is a Research Fellow at the BESA Centre and a member of the Deborah Forum for women in foreign and security policy.
India is also recalibrating its diplomatic architecture. During the 2025 ceasefire talks with Pakistan, Delhi "rejected all external mediation" - a deliberate repudiation of earlier practices.
The authors stress that this was not tactical but doctrinal: "India now treats crises with Pakistan as regionally internal." Even long-standing agreements are being reassessed through a security-first lens. The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty is described as "the first deliberate use of a resource-sharing treaty as coercive leverage," reflecting a view that stabilizing arrangements "now survive only if they reinforce India's security narrative."
On nuclear posture, India continues to declare No First Use, but with sharper ambiguity. Leaders have signaled a shift from assured retaliation to "assured punishment," a formulation that "narrows the room for adversary miscalculation." Advances such as MIRVs, canisterized missiles, and routine SSBN patrols underscore that India's deterrent "is no longer symbolic."
Importantly, the analysis highlights China as "the silent second audience." India's neutralisation of Chinese-origin weapons during Operation Sindoor provided both operational advantage and strategic messaging to Beijing.
The cumulative picture is of a nation deliberately rewriting its strategic playbook. "India is not becoming reckless. It is becoming coherent," Spencer and Amoss conclude. The world, they warn, must now "catch up" to a country aligning doctrine, technology, public expectations, and geopolitical signalling under a single principle: security achieved by India, on India's terms.
