Op Sindoor: For now, all is quiet on the western front

Tracing the broad dynamic of Op Sindoor, there was an initial setback to the IAF in the wee hours of May 7 as a result of the synergy of the Pakistan and Chinese militaries. After that, the recovery was swift and Pakistan suffered accurate hits by supersonic cruise missiles on PAF bases across the length and breadth of the elongated, thin strip of Pakistan.

The vulnerability of India's western neighbour lay exposed: a lack of geostrategic depth and a future imperative to devise an air defence system that is suited to this peculiarity. Pakistan relied on Chinese air defence (AD) systems such as the HQ-9B, which are oriented to China's greater depth and the consequent time it grants the PLA to engage stand-off aerial munitions rocketing towards strategic targets in the heartland.

Conversely, while Indian AD performed well, it is yet to face the acid test of apex Pakistan missiles and saturation strikes by the formidable PLA arsenal of rockets, drones and hypersonic missiles.

The Indian Military targeted the PAF and enemy air defences, specifically, and there was a confirmed aircraft loss on the enemy's side: a vital Saab 2000 Erieye AEW&C aircraft at Bholari PAF base due to a BrahMos hit.

The setback to the IAF on the first night changed the escalatory dynamic radically as India had to go up further on the escalatory ladder than envisioned, so as to come up trumps. However, its influence on the escalatory dynamic has not been overtly factored --- due to a complexity of political and military compulsions --- into the analysis of how Op Sindoor panned out. It was incorrectly stated that the Pakistan military targeted the Indian military only later but the fact is that it had retaliated in the first engagement itself from 1.05-1.28 am on May 7 by engaging IAF jets that were well within Indian airspace and had not initiated any hostility towards the Pakistan military.

Strategic wisdom in cessation of firing

Despite the plethora of uninformed voices across the board, from social media warriors, veterans to TV / Youtube podcast strategic affairs analysts, decrying the "premature ceasefire" after Pakistan was "on the mat", the Government of India acted with strategic wisdom in agreeing upon a cessation of firing and military actions. Had Pakistan been brought to the verge of a humiliating devastation by prolonging the confrontation, it would have invited reckless retaliation by a cornered enemy and the hazard of drawing in a Chinese military intervention to save the skin of its "all weather strategic partner".

That would have entailed a diversion of Indian military resources to the vast northern and eastern disputed frontiers and a dissipation of the military's focus on Pakistan. Similarly, an Indian land and air offensive into POJK for its "takeover" would have invited overt Chinese hostility as Beijing has substantive geo-economic and geo-strategic interests in the disputed region in the guise of CPEC and access to the warm water port of Gwadhar, offering a part-solution to its 'Malacca dilemma.' That apart, it would represent invoking a decisive move towards the nuclear red lines as an offensive across the LoC would constitute an existential or a severely-destabilising threat to the Pakistan-China jugular in the guise of POJK.

Global media coverage of two nuclear powers with hardened and battle-scarred militaries engaging in missile bouts, drone attacks, city blackouts and civilian air traffic disruption would only serve to attrite India's economy and its attractiveness to foreign investors. Loose talk by US President Donald Trump that the two South Asian neighbours have been battling for more than a thousand years feeds into that negativity image. On the other hand, Pakistan has little to lose by way of such economic growth disruption as it is heavily dependent on rentier state loans, religious benevolence and monetary gifts from partners driven by strategic interests. India's goal to achieve Viksit Bharat by 2047 would stand imperilled by cycles of terrorism and lingering military confrontations.

Irrationality-rationality index  

Op Sindoor vividly framed the limits of Pakistan's nuclear card. By keeping a calibrated offensive far below the real nuclear red lines, India created a space for conventional military strikes that allowed it to damage Pakistan in its politico-strategic heartland of Punjab. The nuclear bluff was called, and as CDS Gen. Anil Chauhan pointed out, "I found both sides displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as actions. So, why should we assume that in the nuclear domain, there will be irrationality on someone else’s part?"

Pakistan relies on a cultivated image of “irrationality” to make its nuclear brinkmanship effective, especially in the West and amongst its scholars to seek intervention when cornered. That is the reason why Pakistan is invariably first off the blocks in the realm of information warfare: to catch the Western eye and the attention of other intervention-capable powers like the Gulf States.

As the doyen of the Pakistani nuclear domain, Lt. Gen. Khalid A. Kidwai (retd.), pointed out after Op Sindoor: "Nuclear capability invariably shakes and spurs the international community into timely action to prevent things going out of hand between two heavily-armed nuclear powers."

Op Sindoor has shown that the Pakistan Army is best evaluated by an 'irrationality-rationality' index, i.e., it speedily moves from irrational postures and actions to rational behaviour when its time-tested bluff is called out and the applecart threatens to topple.

By declaring Pakistan as a rational actor, the CDS was elucidating upon an obvious but oft-missed truth: the Pakistan Army and the national politicians constitute the richest sections of society and thus nurture the greatest vested interest in nuclear stability in South Asia, notwithstanding the speedy resort to nuclear brinkmanship and "drama" when State-upon-State retaliations follow in the wake of Rawalpindi's revisionist policies and proxy wars.

The CDS thus degraded Pakistan’s 'irrationality card' and Western manipulation in South Asia premised on nuclear instability (demonstrated also by Trump hyping the nuclear holocaust and floating radioactive dust dimensions to vie for a Nobel Peace Prize). Henceforth, it is for the West and Pakistan's partners to avert a supposed nuclear holocaust because India has demonstrated it will strike hard and below the actual nuclear threshold. If these powers fear a nuclear fallout, they can pre-empt it by reining in Rawalpindi's adventurism in the realm of hybrid and proxy wars, and sub-nuclear provocations such as the Baisaran butchery.

Dragon in the room

On the obverse side, the lesson of Op Sindoor has been to realise that India should not rely on military options solely to off-balance Pakistan. The disruptions of the Indus flows, denial of hydrological data and off-loading silt from dams into Pakistan's waterways has rattled Pakistan more than anything else. A subdued Islamabad has not even dared to take to the logical conclusion its decision to hold in abeyance all bilateral agreements, including the 1972 Shimla Accord, as a retaliation to disruptive Indian actions on the Indus waters.

Thus, a carefully-calibrated and thought-through policy on inflicting graded pain on Pakistan by way of the vital Indus waters will leave Pakistan with a much narrower window of opportunity to inflict terrorism on India, as it will play into New Delhi's contention that the massacres of its civilians forces its hand on the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. It also strengthens India's hand while negotiating for an equitable hydrological agreement with its upper riparian state and Pakistan's partner, China.

The China factor in the Indo-Pakistan hostility dynamic is the critical one. Beijing is the proverbial elephant, or the fire-spitting dragon, in the sub-continental war room. The Government of India, contemporaneously pushed towards Beijing by a Trump who is least interested in confronting China or getting the US to act as a counter-balance, has prudently invested political capital in reviving and strengthening political ties with Beijing in the guise of tours by senior-most Cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister's summits with the Chinese President and arrival of "understandings between the leaders".

Given the close and effective military support extended by China to Pakistan during Op Sindoor, especially by way of operational concepts, early warning / battlefield domain awareness / targeting data from the former's formidable BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, India requires a modus vivendi with Beijing on account of the geographical imperative and the military nexus.

When moved to a more neutral position in the triangulation of three nuclear powers, Beijing would impose restraints on Pakistan to achieve Beijing's own foreign, strategic and economic policy objectives as consistently espoused in its formulation: the call for regional peace and stability.

Spiralling hostilities between India and Pakistan do not suit Beijing as it destabilises South Asia and plays into the hand of global powers that seek to contain China, implode it (like the way of the USSR) and unleash jehaadi and other insurgent forces on China's restive provinces and its burgeoning interests across the seas and land frontiers.