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- “It is both an honour and a responsibility to visit Azad Jammu & Kashmir, which is the living frontline of deterrence, resilience, and sacrifice.
- The book “Strategic Reckoning” is also an intellectual reckoning.
- As we stand on the frontlines of history and geography, let us define our strategic grammar not as a reaction, but as authorship.
- I’ll speak on three planes: to assess the book, contrast its intellectual honesty and strategic clarity with another recent volume from across the border titled “Operation Sindoor” ; and to project forward, proposing a path for deterrence thinking in a region teetering on India’s revisionist ambition and doctrinal disorder.
- Strategic Reckoning has stayed clear from becoming an echo chamber. Dr Akhtar and her team resisted the temptation – and perhaps even the urgings – to homogenise the book’s messaging. A first reading confirmed for me that this was the right editorial choice.
- Notably, Ambassador Sardar Masood Khan’s chapter foregrounds the Kashmir dimension; Air Cdre Banuri offers an incisive assessment of the air war; Rear Admiral Faisal Shah reveals the often-over-looked naval theatre, Dr Atia unravels the complexities of gray zone warfare, Dr Jaspal reasons how conventional deterrence played out.
- 7. “Strategic Reckoning” is a polyphony of perspectives – each grounded in lived geography, doctrinal prudence, and strategic sobriety. As Gen Kidwai – the founding Director General of Strategic Plans Division – notes in his preface, the book reaffirms that deterrence works not just in static theory but in dynamic practice. It offers a framework of “restraint by design,” explicitly rejecting compellence.
- 8. Compellence is the use of threats or limited force as a strategic instrument to coerce an adversary’s behaviour.
- Where deterrence seeks to prevent action by fear of a consequence, compellence seeks to force action through same logic.
- Deterrence sustains stability; compellence invites escalation
- In the 20 chapters by 18 contributors, we represent different vantage points: civilian scholars, military practitioners, and practitioners-turned-policy advisors. But we are united by a shared belief: that responsible deterrence is not the abandonment of resolve; it is its highest expression.
- India’s strategic imagination today is shaped by an emboldened Hindutva mindset. Operation Sindoor, as presented by Indian contributors like Happymon Jacob, reflects an expanding reliance on coercive doctrines rather than deterrence – akin to ideological compellence rooted in territorial revisionism.
- India seems to be animated by a Nazism-like ideological zeal. Its nuclear-armed Hindutva has revealed increasingly extremist instincts by veering towards compellence. Just as Lebensraum – ‘living space’ for Aryans – underpinned Nazi expansionism, so too does Hindutva’s vision of Akhand Bharat seek strategic gain through coercion and territorial revisionism. We witnessed it in their Defence Minister’s recent revanchist claim about Sindh.
- But each time India has experimented with compellence, it has been met with a sobering reminder: under the shadow of nuclear weapons, there is no space for war.
- In contrast to Strategic Reckoning, Operation Sindoor is a book that echoes Indian official narrative seeking to establish a self-congratulatory doctrine rooted in compellence and coercion. Its defining features are narrative inflation, doctrinal drift, and intellectual hubris.
- Authors such as Arun Sahgal and Ambuj Sahu frame this shift as India’s “new normal”, where pre-emptive strikes are positioned as standard deterrent tools.
- Similarly, Jacob lays out twelve arguments supporting doctrinal escalation, while Rakesh Sood discussed ‘conventional operations under the nuclear shadow’ as a managed risk – not a provocation.
- It misreads Pakistan’s restraint as weakness and India’s adventurism as strategic innovation.
- Yet the ground reality, as chronicled in “Strategic Reckoning,” is unambiguous. Pakistan’s calibrated response – that was defensive, proportionate and Quid Pro Quo Plus – neutralized India’s deep strikes and exposed the fragility of Indian escalation models.
- AJ&K also bore the brunt, but not the collapse. In Bilal Masjid here (Muzaffarabad), Kotli, Bhimber, and Neelum valley, it was the people’s resolve and the military’s readiness that held the line.
- Their narrative builds six myths, which appear frequently in the Indian volume – often without critical scrutiny. For example, Rajesh Basrur assesses the nuclear dimension but understates the risk of threshold blurring, while Shiv Sahai forecasts an uptick in so-called terror threats to J&K, implying justification for so-called “preventive strikes”:
(1) That India has established a ‘new normal’ for retaliation.
(2) That Pakistan’s nuclear bluff has been called, and the deterrence has been blunted.
(3) That compellence can substitute for diplomacy.
(4) That international tolerance for escalation has increased.
(5) That Kashmir is a mere theatre, not a people.
(6) The false flag operation in Pahalgam was Pakistani sponsored violence.
- We rebut each of these with facts, history, and lived resistance.
- Towards a Future of Strategic Realignment. As we look ahead, Pakistan’s deterrence journey must continue to evolve to meet the realities of future operating environment. The next chapter in Pakistan’s deterrence journey must incorporate two main pillars:
- First, we must integrate cyber, space, and information warfare vectors to keep pace with the dynamism of tomorrow’s conflict landscape. This also demands greater jointness across land, air, sea, space, and even nuclear environment. The recent structural step – particularly the appointment of the Chief of Defence Forces, is a timely and prudent step in that direction.
- As Dr Adil Sultan and Ali Zia, in their chapters on “FSD and the Illusion of Bluff” and “Signalling Stability”, note that the deterrent signalling is not in the volume of threats, but in credibility and calculated ambiguity. The future deterrence environment will depend not just on posture, but on calibrated signalling across multi-domain layers.
- Second, Azad Jammu & Kashmir is no more a geographical buffer, it is fast emerging as a front-line of intellectual and strategic deterrence. University of AJ&K and CISS AJK are doing a commendable work – work that is even making a visible impact beyond current frontiers.
- Our brothers and sisters in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir would be looking to you for intellectual anchoring and moral clarity. Dr Atia’s contribution on gray zone retaliation reinforces the idea that AJ&K is not just terrain – it is the testbed of strategic composure. What happens here has continental consequence.
- Hence, your academic and philosophical resilience is not peripheral; it is our shared forward shield in the contestation of narratives.
- Kashmir is Not the Backdrop, It is the Heartline
- Let me end by returning to this sacred land of Jammu & Kashmir – sacred not just for its beauty, but because our ancestors, our mothers, our sisters, silent and unsung heroes, and our future generations continue to make sacrifices here.
- We have endured India’s terrorism and hybrid warfare through its agents like Kulbushan Yadav, its sleeper agents elsewhere, and through its current proxies in Afghanistan. So too do those of our brothers and sisters who endure illegal occupation across the LOC.
- You are not footnotes in Pakistan’s strategic story; you are its pulse. Your fortitude during the trials of Operation Sindoor revalidated our deterrence model. And your continued resolve remains the surest guarantee of peace with dignity. As Ali Zia emphasizes, the ability to communicate resolve without crossing escalation thresholds is what kept deterrence intact, even as India attempted to manufacture space for limited war.
- To the students and scholars here: read these competing narratives. Learn to deconstruct them. And above all, build a strategic vocabulary rooted in your geography, your experience, and your truth.
- Pakistan’s strategic posture is not born of desperation but of deliberation. “Strategic Reckoning” is not a full stop; it is a semicolon. The next sentence belongs to you. This book reminds us that we must now imagine a South Asian future not shaped by India’s doctrinal drift, but by deliberate choices anchored in strategic stability, restraint, and regional dignity.
- Dr Salik aptly drew a key lesson that “strategic stability in South Asia will not emerge from military posturing but from political clarity and doctrinal restraint.”
- I’ll stop here – the book talks for itself.”
