Speech at the Book Launch Ceremony of Strategic Reckoning: Perspectives on Deterrence and Escalation Post-Pahalgam – May 2025

“Bismillah

Respected guests and colleagues, Assalam-o-Alaikum.

• It is indeed a pleasure to be here once again, and I wish to begin by commending Dr. Asma Shakir Khawaja and her star team of CISS-AJK for the excellent work they are introducing and establishing in this region and also thanking them for hosting this vital conversation. As someone who has worked on national security dynamics for over a decade, it is refreshing to engage with an audience situated at the very crossroads of geography, geopolitics, doctrine, and deterrence. Strategic Reckoning: Perspectives on Deterrence and Escalation Post-Pahalgam – May 2025 Strategic Reckoning: Perspectives on Deterrence and Escalation Post-Pahalgam – May 2025
• Thanks also to Dr. Rabia Akhtar, the editor of Strategic Reckoning, whose intellectual energy has transformed a collection of chapters into a doctrinal compass for Pakistan’s strategic future.
• Strategic Reckoning, published right after recalibration of deterrence in South Asia and its restoration by Pakistan, is more than a compilation; it is a constellation of perspectives. Its focus on signalling and grey-zone calibration reflects an emerging Pakistani strategic grammar. We are no longer passive recipients of imported deterrence models; we are generating indigenous, experience-based, and doctrine-aware frameworks.
• Pakistan’s deterrence model now integrates three mutually reinforcing components:
• A nuclear umbrella as the ultimate guarantor.
• Conventional readiness, demonstrated by Bunyan-Um-Marsoos.
• A grey-zone toolkit encompassing cyber defence, information operations, and electronic warfare.
• I will briefly highlight how Operation Bunyan-Um-Marsoos was rooted in precision retaliation and how it redefined the contours of grey-zone deterrence in South Asia.
• The grey zone is not new, but it is now the principal space of confrontation. It is where cyber intrusions, proxy forces, political subversion, disinformation, and low-visibility strikes coexist without triggering outright war.
• We are now operating within a spectrum of conflict where conventional boundaries are blurred. The grey zone is not merely a space between war and peace. It is the terrain of calibrated coercion, ambiguous aggression, and hybrid tactics.
• For Pakistan, this new battlefield demands navigating this space, which requires clarity in doctrine and credibility in execution.
• India’s first move after Pahalgam was a coordinated disinformation and deep-fake campaign blaming Pakistan, using memes, synthetic audio, fabricated chats and recycled conflict footage to shape global narrative and domestic opinion. These were recipes taken from its old false flag playbook and the new thing was that Pakistan was prepared for a focused, managed response this time.
• Pakistan’s response emerged as a unified, durable, norm-compliant civil-military posture rather than an ad hoc reaction, as Bunyanum Marsoos, the Qur’anic image of a “solid, cemented structure” (61:4).
• It was a calibrated, cross-domain operation fusing digital, informational and psychological tools with precise kinetic actions, rather than a purely bomb-for-bomb response.
• The objectives were threefold: to neutralize India’s cyber-enabled provocations, to degrade hostile narrative architectures and disinformation ecosystems that sought to shape perceptions against Pakistan, and to re-establish Pakistan’s strategic credibility and narrative control across digital and informational theatres.
• Pakistan kept consciously operating within an internally developed doctrinal and legal framework, using “attribution-controlled” digital retaliation to preserve escalatory discipline and normative legitimacy.
• Thus, deterrence was no longer measured only in megatons or brigade counts but in narrative control, digital precision and escalation discipline across cyber, information and cognitive domains.
• It was Pakistan’s success in strategic communication during the crisis which now calls for a formal National Strategic Communications Policy that integrates the government, diplomacy, academia and digital outreach as a permanent plank of national defence.Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos marked a pivotal shift from reactive silence to anticipatory, calibrated assertion: we imposed costs on India’s “digital adventurism,” protected our cyber sovereignty, and enhanced Pakistan’s reputational capital. It set a different “new normal” for Pakistan—combining restraint, capability, and strategic communications to preserve peace without yielding to Indian aggression.
• The people of Azad Jammu & Kashmir have not been passive observers. During the May 2025 escalation, nearly 60% of Indian long-range firepower was directed toward AJ&K, yet there was no collapse of morale or mass evacuations. This region is not a buffer; it is a strategic resonator. Your resilience is deterrence in action and our forward line of defence.
• Grey-zone conflict is ultimately a contest over perception. It targets cohesion, morale, and clarity. Our response must therefore go beyond missiles and radars to strengthen societal resilience, narrative sovereignty, and strategic literacy, in AJ&K and all over Pakistan.
• I’ll conclude the grey-zone warfare tests discipline as much as capability.
• Operation Bunyan-Um-Marsoos showed that Pakistan can respond with clarity and firmness without sliding into uncontrolled escalation.
• Our deterrence now rests not only on how we deter but on how we choose to deter—and how wisely and consistently we do it.
• It was a declaration that Pakistan’s deterrence is multidomain, agile, and morally anchored.
• The grey zone will remain contested, but we must remain vigilant, versatile, and intellectually prepared. That is how we deter in the shadows—so that we are equipped to fight the adversary in the light.

Thank you.”

Author: Dr. Atia Ali Kazmi is the President of the Global Peace Strategy Forum (GPSF).