CS Conversations convened an erudite panel of experts who know the business – diplomacy, global power tussles, military hardware and India’s positioning in our immediate neighbourhood. We bring you excerpts of this engaging, forward looking and critical conversation. The discussion was moderated by Maj General V K Singh and Navin Berry, Editor.
Maj Gen VK Singh: There were certain warning signs prior to the Pahalgam incident, specially the provocative speech made by the Pakistan’s Army Chief. It was almost as if they were inviting us to retaliate, which we did. The question is that did we walk into an ambush? Was our response completely predictable? The Prime Minister has clearly said that we are in a state of war, and this may just be a temporary pause. How will it really pan out, in case we are provoked again?
Lt. Gen. Ashok Shivane: I think that there is a problem of Kashmir, and there is a problem in Kashmir, and both must be tackled. The problem in Kashmir in terms of radicalization, in terms of such incidents taking place, is compounded by the lack of intelligence which is a problem. But for the problem of Kashmir, we have to look at it from the lenses of Pakistan. More often than not we look at Pakistan and China from the Indian lenses, and that’s where I think we tend to go wrong.
But having said that, I want to highlight one issue and that is at the strategic level. Op Sindoor is one event of lower end of spectrum though high in intensity. So, we must look at the larger threats that are manifesting and build up our capabilities. Long and short of it is, be a long-distance runner, be prepared for the haul.
Ambassador Ajay Bisaria: So, my answer would be no, we did not walk into a trap. You could argue that there were some signals that this could possibly happen, but I would say that this was not a clear pattern and it could not have been clearly predicted that something like Pahalgam would happen. It was important because their Army Chief wanted to establish his position, and he wanted to do this so that he could rally the country around the flag at a time when he was beleaguered internally. In retrospect, that seems to be the best fit theory.
Whether we walked into a trap, I think we did what we had to. We had to re-establish the deterrence we had established in Balakot six years earlier, and it was inevitable that we should have gone and had an operation that was even more severe than Balakot, and hopefully with that, we have re-established deterrence, as well as increased the cost to the Pakistan Army for the next time it does it. I would argue that we have succeeded in our objective of both establishing some kind of deterrence and increasing cost and of course as a punitive strike against the terrorists.
Iqbal Malhotra: Around the 10th or 12th of April, the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, announced that Apple was going to shift the manufacturing of about 54 million iPhones, for the US market from China to India. That was considered to be a very big threat to the Chinese economy. And the ambush, in my mind, and my understanding was set by the Chinese and they drew us into that fight because they wanted to portray India as a country that was unstable, could face nuclear war at any given point of time and dissuade investors. And apart from Apple, there were four other major US corporations who were planning to relocate manufacturing to India. Now, whether or not they were successful in doing this, the Chinese, the jury is still out on that. But I would say yes, it was definitely an ambush.
Maj Gen VK Singh: If you follow the Foreign Secretary’s press briefing, and the DGMO briefing post Op Sindoor, there is a narrative which comes out which repeatedly talks about certain aspects. One of them is telling the world that, India is a very responsible nation. All strikes were non-escalatory. No civilian or military targets has been hit. Only terrorist sites have been taken down. To me, this narrative sounds extremely defensive and apologetic. I could be totally wrong. But because it was repeated so many times one could not help but exclaim; that who is listening or who are we trying to sell this narrative to? Is it the correct narrative? Then you hear another narrative that comes out from Israel. Israel is a country whose size is approximately 24,000 square kilometers. It is smaller than the state of Haryana. But they make very strong statements. There are no defensive statements. And they are also protecting themselves, as they have been doing, for last so many decades.
Are we following a narrative which is okay or do we need to change this narrative. Let me tell you that even J&K, half the time we buy casualties because we are trying to protect collateral damage. Our own boys go down because some civilian should not be killed or even you know let’s say bringing down a house will prevent casualties to own forces. It’s a totally different way of fighting. It is like fighting with your hands tied, and then you say I have given you a free hand. So, I request your views on this.
Ajay Bisaria: So you know I would argue that it really would depend on how we define our objectives and you framed it in the context of Israel and it is a good comparison to make. Israel had made the commitment after the October 07 Hamas attack that it will not just avenge but it will now remove the threat permanently. So, it would fight the seven-front war, take care of Iran, and do a lot of stuff which was not simply deterring Hamas from another terrorist attack. And therefore, it expended blood and sweat in doing that in a continuing war that has been going on for two years plus. In India’s case the objectives are well defined and limited. Punitive strikes on the terrorists and deterrence for the future, and having achieved these political objectives, de-escalate. I think it was a brilliant plan the political class set for the defence forces. This had the capacity to do what Israel did but had the political directive of limiting the war.
So, the escalation came with the de-escalation instinct and I think the larger issue is that the Indian political class wants to manage the security problem of China and get on with the India story. We do not want a three-year war, where we spend all our time cleaning up Pakistan, losing thousands of people on our side and then getting into a territory where the India story is derailed and we are losing a percentage of GDP growth.
Kamal Malhotra: I would like to make two points. One is on the narrative. I think that where India lost the narrative was through a very irresponsible media. I have just come back from New York and Poland and in both places, I talked to a lot of senior people, India has never provided any proof, it is assumed and India expects everyone to assume that these were terrorists. But there hasn’t been any clear proof, there haven’t been any arrests. You talked about a proxy, but there was no arrest. And then you send out these so-called bipartisan delegations and each one of them was questioned on the proof. And it was far from convincing. So, a lot of taxpayer money was spent on sending out delegations who really did not change too many opinions.
And I think the comparison with Israel is odious. It is a genocidal state. It is a state that has broken every international law. It has a Prime Minister who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court. He is a war criminal. So, for India to be comparing itself with Israel, in any manner, is a really bad comparison.
Iqbal Malhotra: About the narrative, I would like to argue that like Iran has a forward line of defense which is the Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Pakistan’s forward line of defense is the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba etc. There are no terrorist camps inside Pakistan and there are no non-state actors. They are all state actors. And the proof of this is that when the camps were attacked on the night of 6th, 7th May by the IAF, the Pakistan Air Force immediately engaged the Indian Air Force. And why would the Pakistan Air Force engage if they had already been warned, that look, we are only attacking terrorist camps. The fact is that while these are terrorist camps; you are attacking state infrastructure and assets and these state assets are recognized in a chain of command that goes all the way up to the PLA. They are interoperable and integrated and they are part of the forward flags of the Pakistan Army.
Lt Gen P S Rajeshwar: First thing, I think what we have done is exhibited our resolve. That is a big yes. But if you are looking for a deterrence, my understanding is deterrence is more by denial, that needs to be achieved. If you are saying that is ok, the Balakot operation in 2019 achieved deterrence, I would like to differ because I do not think by a solitary strike you can achieve that. Do we go the same route? Do we say that this is, we are trying to achieve deterrence by minimal punishment, where we can avoid collateral damage and the military? In the escalation ladder, to my understanding, it is not very easy because it has two sides. It is not very simplistic and it can go out of control, you may desire one thing, but you may end up doing something else. So, we need to prepare for Op Sindoor 2.0.
Also, you can take out terrorists, but taking out terrorism is a different issue. And if the Pakistani establishment, which we have seen over so many decades they are going to actually continue to support terrorism, which is linked to Kashmir, then we have to be very clear that there are three elements the world is bothered. Like Kamal said and when you say you know media, whether you believe them or not, they are more bothered about both Kashmir being a flashpoint. If they are hit similarly on terrorism, yes definitely. What strategies we want to adopt to do that may be different. But that is my understanding on this.
Lt. Gen. Ashok Shivane: As far as the narrative is concerned, I think we did lose it. I look at the narrative in terms of a strategic communication which is an essential part of deterrence. Capability, credibility of the political will and strategic communication. Strategic communication we have been losing it. Why? Because strategic communication is not an afterthought. Strategic communication comes before the event, during the event and post the event. And look at the voices. Extremely well conducted press briefings, but we are talking of strategic communication at the strategic level. You saw the briefing; I am not trying to equate the Middle East to Operation Sindoor but see the briefing of Secretary of Defence and the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff on 22 June 2025. Why cannot we have for example, the CDS and the Defence Secretary or the Raksha Mantri talk of the event at the strategic level, they will be heard.
Therefore, we need to look within, is there a need of a Director General Strategic Communication under the CDS as a one-point voice rather than three Services speaking and talking. You know cohesion during conduct of operations; the voice also must be cohesive that is as far as strategic communications concerned.
As far as the escalatory ladder is concerned, I think it was very well controlled, without any strategic oversight. And we learnt a lot during this control and domination and at each stage coming up with the conflict termination plan. But what we learnt was there are sub-steps in each ladder and that is not only military, it is political, it is economic, it is diplomatic. So, we learnt a holistic model of this ladder. In my mind, I have been able to work out 13 steps of this ladder, 8 which we climbed and 5 which we did not.
But we today need to, I won’t say that I will compare it with Israel, two different models, two different operational environment, two different compulsions. But what I would like to end by saying is, I think the manner in which we upscaled and dominated the escalatory ladder was extremely well done as a coercive approach by the nation.
Maj Gen Jagatbir Singh: There is no doubt what General Shivane has said is absolutely correct about the escalatory ladder. But my issue is regarding what he has raised regarding strategic communication. What I felt is that our entire communication was targeted towards a domestic audience while there is also an international audience and an adversarial audience. Whereas Pakistan went one step ahead and they started, having pro-Pakistanis writing articles in international journals and in international papers and they had people who are speaking their language in the international media. So, that was one difference.
And the other issue, that is concerning is that the CDS chose to go to Singapore and then talk about our losses over there. Whereas if this had been covered in that DGMO level briefing or whether it had been raised by the CDS level in India, maybe it would have gone down in a different manner. So, I do not know what you have to say about that because it took everybody by surprise especially in light of what was being mentioned on social media by Pakistani sympathisers.
Ajay Bisaria: Strategic communication is an important issue which I think should be really debated very well. And in my view, you know, the battle was fought in three domains, military, diplomatic and information. Military, an unqualified success, we all seem to agree on that. Diplomatic, I would argue quite successful because we were not condemned for attacking a sovereign country without evidence, for instance, our right to respond to terrorism was acknowledged by the world, even though they did not criticize Pakistan by name. On the information domain, I think this is where we have to go back to the drawing board. We did better as you said than in 2019 where we did not issue even a tweet about our attack and it came from the Pakistani ISPR a few hours after we had attacked. But I think it is important to keep all three audiences in mind, what we are communicating to the adversary Pakistan, what we are communicating to the world and what we are communicating to our domestic audience.
And very briefly we can get into details, I would recommend that we should have had a whole team working on just the strategic communication as you said before, during and after and that team would not be the team that was fighting the war because the CDS told us recently that look my job is to create facts on the ground, not to be communicating those facts real time and that’s the point. People who are fighting the war should not be expected to be going out there and clarifying until the war is over. It is really the job of another team which should be doing this.
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra: I am surprised with the amount of time we are talking about narrative and winning the narrative. If Sindoor has shown anything, it shows that our conventional edge over Pakistan, especially China and Pakistan is not very strong. And all we should really be focusing on is capacity and capability building for whatever we are pushed to do in the future.
As a people, I think we are too prone to conspiracy theories and convoluted explanations about why things happen. It is a straightforward business of Pakistan trying to keep at us, in every which way it can. And we have not developed the deterrence, or the compelling ability to make Pakistan do what we want or to at least leave us alone. So, I mean, in the final analysis, it is what you do on the battlefield. Narratives may be won or lost.
It is not the end of the world if you lose a narrative. It is the end of the world if you get struck in your principal cities. And we have many assumptions. Maybe, I am a bit contrarian. For example, size, and I will leave it at that. Size means nothing. Just because you are big does not mean you are powerful.
Some assumptions are required, if nothing else, to build positivity. But we should not get carried away by our own narratives and, miss the actual thing for what it is. We need to be able to fight much better, and we need to build capacity and capability across all domains, and we should be focusing on that. That requires money, technology, industry, and I think that we talked about Op Sindoor, and that’s why I normally, I think we’ve done enough of analysis. We need to really focus all discussions, including this, in what we are going to do next. We have very little edge over Pakistan, conventionally, and we have adopted a laid-out strategy in which we are going to respond conventionally to any terrorist attack. This needs discussion.
Kamal Malhotra: I just want to make one additional point which is that if you look at the size differential and the defence budget differential and the outcome at least to someone like me, it can even be argued that India did not win given its huge size, its multiples in terms of defence budget, but in terms of the outcome, it is not at all clear to lots of people in the world that India actually came out on top. And the China factor is a huge one. And I think this has huge implications for the future. And I do not believe we can claim that deterrence was achieved.
Lt. Gen. Rajeshwar: I do not think with one odd strike, for 3-4 days, you have achieved deterrence. That is not my understanding of deterrence anyway. And against terrorism, world over, there has been an attempt to establish deterrence itself.
So, more people are relying on deterrence. Make sure these things do not happen on your soil, prevent terrorist acts. Dealing with terrorism is totally different. This is one. Second aspect which I think I forgot earlier, but I think merits consideration is that, if you are going to learn lessons from any, and this is a huge national event, you have to classify this conflict. You cannot say that it is war, right, the entire nation’s resources are gone.
But it is short war, near war or an armed conflict, because those lessons are different. And the duration of impact is different. And therefore, I feel that classification is also important when we actually extrapolate and say that now we have achieved this and that you know and it is fashionable to of course, say mowing the grass it will look sounds good, but is it in our interest, especially when we have two adversaries. So, that you have to make sure especially when you look at what the Admiral also said, that we need to build up for the bigger rival and not get distracted at times, although you can achieve what you can achieve. So, I think deterrence is what we have to qualify and what you want.
Maj Gen VK Singh: I will add, to summarize, that we thought, we are much better, much stronger, much more prepared. We were taken by surprise to quite an extent. And that comes from the fact of two-three things. First is collusivity. Earlier it was only China and Pakistan. I believe there is a lot of collusivity with Turkey also. And in my own sources I believe that even the operators and some of the weapon systems were from these countries. We cannot prove it but point is that they were manning them. And if the rhetoric of being over powerful vis-a-vis Pakistan is concerned is shaken to some extent, I think the writing is on the wall to build up our capability and that is what we should be doing. That capability includes the diplomatic, information and everything else that comes with it.
Now we have come to be slightly knee jerk in our systems to make ourselves more capable. When Kargil happened suddenly, suddenly voids were found and huge amounts of money were released that okay go buy something. Parakram happened again, huge amount of money was released, go buy something. 26/11, again, bang on same thing. Uri, Balakot. I would like you to just give it a thought.
What are these better ammunitions, loitering ammunition, artillery shells, tank ammunition, when did it come? Sir, they came as a result of all these actions which were done by our neighbour. They did not come through the normal procurement route. So, the second part which I wanted to mention was that, one is that we need to build up our capabilities but we also need to look at our systems how we are able to procure this. And now is the time when we very clearly have one enemy whether you look at the North or West it’s a combined threat in both theatres.
So, while we work on this, do keep in mind that there is another Bangladesh coming into being.
AVM Rajeev Hora: Yes one small point. It looks like it was an ambush. We do not know. Even if it was, it was pitched at the strongman image of the Prime Minister. You know, he has to now show up that, I am a strongman. So, we have reacted and not responded.
Had we played and, you know, caused Pakistan fatigue for a month, and kept doing a strategic communication that we are investigating. That, if it turns out that they were indeed Pakistani state sponsored, we will take action. In those 40 days, we would have fatigued the enemy to a level that we could have done anything to him and then it would have been a response and we would have been able to take the world along with us.
Air Marshal Sanjeev Kapoor: I was with the Israeli Ambassador yesterday in a closed door meeting of a think tank and I heard a totally different perspective. We need to look at first our narrative that has come out in our discussion. We need to have a body, central body. We have a body for each political party. BJP has one media vertical, Congress has one, each party has one. The media channels, it was very poorly covered, both Air India 171 crash, people who have never entered a cockpit in their life are commenting about flying and aerospace safety. People who have never worn uniform or their kith or kin have never interacted with any forces are interacting about war tactics. So, we have new drawing room kinds of experts. We need to check that.
The counter to this is we should have a body. The government should constitute something. A spokesperson, mix of the various politicians should give a brief on daily basis. I am not saying this should apply to war alone. There has to be any event which is of, like hypothetically, the Air India crash, there has to be Ministry of Civil Aviation, DGCA representatives to articulate the government position.
Secondly, more and more Hamas kind of tactics were seen in this war. The Hamas people have already infiltrated Pakistan occupied J&K, and more and more intertwining of Hamas, the terrorists, and the Army is taking place. A similar thing happened in 1989 when USSR pulled out, all the terrorists started to move into J&K. Now with Hamas nearly eliminated, these people are finding new places and this warfare, both of drone and missiles, has never happened on our soil.
So, this Israel and Iran war is telling us that the next war would be fought differently. Now, are we prepared? Are we having adequate number of missiles, drones, satellite integration, weapons? This is the area I feel for non-contact warfare. The next thing the country has to prepare, in my opinion, is for urban warfare. Because the weapons which the Pakistanis fired were from the towns and places in Lahore city or in Gujaranwala. The aim being, if you take them out, you will have to, so there are terrorists are hiding in the cities, which the channels are covering. Are we prepared to take down like Israelis, a target on the second floor on a six-story building?
Iqbal Malhotra: I just want to make one point that national security has to be disconnected from domestic politics. Because national security is for the defence of the nation. And that is when you have to be proactive and plan and not be reactive and address people behind you, not in front of you.
Lt. Gen. Ashok Shivane: My two quick points, one is extension of what he said is we still carry a very reactive mindset. We require a proactive and preemptive mindset. Even the statement that the act of terrorism is equal to act of war is accepting that something comes and then you react. Why cannot it be that a threat of terrorism is equal to an assured retribution. Point number two, when we talk of capabilities and capacities. You are right, the defence budget, right from 1960 to 1.62% of GDP, it means the graph is up and down after every crisis. And similarly, for the emergency purchases, what we have seen now Rs 40,000 crores has been released. So, the point is that do we look at the flavor of capabilities that we want. Are we right balancing kinetic versus non-kinetic in a formalized way, manned versus the unmanned, right? So, we have to right balance the capabilities for future warfare. Two, when you talk of capability it is not just equipment. It is to do with your doctrines, it is to do with your structures, it is to do with your professional military education, it is to do with your human resource. If you are looking at something which has to be put in the cold storage or cold start to now a cold strike capability, I think we have to relook at the contours and the flavors and the colors of capability and capacities that we need to do that.
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra: We have been at this for many years. There is no magic wand, no national security strategy, theatre commands, CDS. All people are under the impression that there will be something which will stop this going on. Let us just for once focus that we need better weapons, better equipment. For that we need money, we need tech, we need people to make that industry, and we need a smart acquisition procedure.
Maj Gen. V K Singh: Thanks gentlemen, for your precise and precious inputs inn our journey forward, in ensuring a safe and secure India, as we roll onwards towards being a developed India.
