India has adopted a multidimensional approach to deterrence, anchored by resolute and punitive strikes designed to raise the costs of aggression for the perpetrators. India largely borrows from the theory of extended deterrence to help support its new approach.

India and Pakistan were recently engaged in a complex conflict across the Line of Control. This was a direct consequence of the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam by the Resistance Front, a Pakistan-based and -backed terror group affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba. This terror attack claimed twenty-six innocent Indian lives. This is not the first time that Pakistan has employed terror as an instrument of statecraft against India; one of the earliest examples dates back to 1947, when tribal lashkars—supported and armed by Pakistan—pillaged and ravaged the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Even a conservative, cursory aggregation, extrapolation, and synthesis of available data suggest that India has endured between around 25,952 Pakistan-based and -backed terrorist attacks in the state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1991 to 2018. This estimate includes not only direct acts of terror, but also cross-border infiltrations, proxy operations, and attacks executed by terrorists recruited, trained, radicalized, or funded by entities across the border. Notably, this data excludes Pakistan-funded militancy in Punjab in the 1980s, in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s, the exodus of the Kashmiri Hindus, the hijacking of IC-184, the dastardly 1993 Mumbai blasts, the Indian Parliament attack in 2001, the Delhi bombings in 2005, the Mumbai train bombing in 2006, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the 2016 Uri attacks, the 2019 Pulwama attacks, and more, which were major acts of terror. However, the recent terror attack in Pehalgam on April 22, 2025, was considered to be the deadliest terror attack on civilians since 2008 Mumbai attacks.

In response, on May 7, India launched Operation Sindoor, calibrated missile strikes hitting the terror infrastructure at nine locations in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Despite declaring the Indian response measured, nonescalatory, and targeting none of Pakistan’s military and civilian infrastructure, Pakistan decided to climb the escalation ladder. India hit back by neutralizing Pakistan air defense systems in Lahore, targeting Pakistani air bases, technical infrastructure, command and control centers, radar sites, and weapons depots. However, the broader and often overlooked issue beyond this immediate conflict is about India’s inadequate deterrence, which had repeatedly failed to deter Pakistan’s state-sponsored acts of terror in India.

Deterrence is established by discouraging or restraining the opponent by raising the cost of the action. It can be done by blocking the enemy’s action by brutal force or by punishing it. In recent times, especially since 2014, India has adopted deterrence by punishment strategies against Pakistan’s support for terrorist organizations. Punishment deterrence strategies raise the costs for the adversary’s actions by taking the offensive against the enemy. The classic examples of this were the surgical strike, a carefully planned military attack across the Line of Control in  Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, targeting the terrorists’ launch pad and training grounds. This attack was in response to an attack on Indian Army brigade headquarters near Uri in Jammu and Kashmir by the Jaiesh-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Pakistan-based terrorist group. Similarly, in 2019, India carried out Balakot airstrikes targeting Pakistan terrorist training camps after JeM suicide bombers attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel.   

These two incidents are celebrated by Indian security, academic, and policy communities for enabling credible deterrence against Pakistan’s proxy actors. However, these measures were not punitive enough to establish deterrence by punishment, nor sufficient to fundamentally alter Pakistan’s strategic calculus or sponsorship of cross-border terrorism.

In the first instance, after the cross-border surgical strikes, Kashmir witnessed three major attacks, including the JeM suicide bombing in Pulwama in February 2019, the Lashkar-e-Taiba  attack on the Amarnath Yatra in July 2017, and the JeM assault on Nagrota in November 2016. Additionally, data from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) reports 1,708 terrorist incidents in Jammu and Kashmir between 2014 and 2018. The MHA data also claims that between 2014 and 2018, there has been a 93 percent rise in the number of security personnel killed in terrorist incidents in the same region. Additionally, these five years also saw a 176 percent rise in the number of terrorist incidents in the state. It was marked by widespread unrest, increased local recruitment into Pakistan-backed and -funded insurgent groups, and heightened anti-government mobilization funded from across the border in the aftermath of the Burhan Wani incident. So there are questions whether India had managed to establish a credible deterrence after the cross-border strikes in 2016.

In the second instance, following the Balakot airstrike, the Kashmir Valley witnessed several years of relative peace and stability. From 2019 until 2025—particularly after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35a of the Indian constitution—the number of terrorist attacks steadily declined year by year, with small-scale incidents largely confined to the districts of Pulwama, Shopian, Anantnag, and Baramulla. This period of limited credible deterrence, however, can be attributed not solely to punitive military action but to a confluence of structural and domestic factors: the tightening of the security apparatus in Jammu and Kashmir following constitutional changes, the global COVID-19 pandemic, Pakistan’s grey-listing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) from June 2018 to October 2022, Pakistan’s protracted economic crisis since mid-2018, and India’s punitive Balakot airstrikes. However, as Pakistan’s economy began to show signs of relative recovery in 2024–25 and with its removal from the FATF grey list in October 2022, the country’s terror deep state resurfaced, reverting to its long-standing strategy of employing proxy actors and asymmetric warfare to challenge India. This resurgence has been manifested predominantly through Lashkar-e-Taiba’s offshoot, the Resistance Front, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, as evidenced by the Dhangri massacre in January 2023, the Poonch ambush in May 2024, and the recent attack on tourists in Pahalgam.

Therefore, the deterrence India achieved in the interim cannot be solely attributed to punitive military actions. It did so with a broader set of structural and systemic constraints on Pakistan’s ability to sustain proxy warfare alongside punitive actions. Now, several of these structural factors are shifting in Pakistan’s favor; India’s deterrence posture has evolved accordingly.  India has adopted a multidimensional approach, anchored by resolute and punitive strikes designed to raise the costs of aggression for the perpetrators. As witnessed in the past and during the recent conflict, limited penal strikes have not deterred Pakistan. To be truly effective, the penal element had to be sufficiently severe, sustained, and targeted to inflict measurable strategic, political, or economic costs that raised the threshold for future provocations.

Furthermore, borrowing the principle from the theory of extended deterrence, India has reportedly established a tripwire by which any future terrorist attacks would be treated as an act of war and responded to accordingly. These measures are complemented by sustained diplomatic and economic strangulation as India has already dispatched its diplomatic delegations to partner countries explaining India’s action, and conveying its message of zero tolerance against terrorism. This is besides other important initiatives like the abeyance of the Indus water treaty. Collectively, these measures are designed to impose costs on the state for its tacit support of and collaboration with terrorist organizations, direct and indirectly. Together, such an integrated strategy should impose higher costs on Pakistan’s deep state and systematically degrade its capacity to orchestrate cross-border terrorism and deter it from indulging in terror financing—provided it responds as a rational state actor.

Image: Eyepress via Reuters