Such Comforting Illusions

NATIONS, LIKE INDIVIDUALS, do not live solely through their actions but also through the stories they tell themselves—narratives that seek to make sense of power, loss, and aspiration. Some of these stories are grounded in fact; others drift, unanchored by consequence. Nowhere is this divergence more visible than in Pakistan’s interpretation of its latest ceasefire with India—a fragile moment repackaged, domestically and diplomatically, as triumph. This framing, however, conceals more than it reveals. What is being celebrated in Pakistan is not a diplomatic masterstroke but a reluctant recalibration, forced by the narrowing of strategic options. For decades, Pakistan’s military elite operated with the belief that it possessed considerable leverage to achieve longstanding goals, enabled by proxy warfare, nuclear deterrence, and selective international sympathy. That illusion is now unravelling. What Rawalpindi calls victory is, in essence, a silent concession to necessity. It is escapism masquerading as strength, a retreat dressed in the language of defiance—a telling instance of the gap between rhetoric and reality.

In contrast, India’s kinetic response to the Pahalgam terror attack has been marked by remarkable maturity. It has resisted the temptations of theatrical triumphalism. Instead of indulging in spectacle, India has articulated a transformative shift in strategic doctrine. Operation Sindoor was not a spasmodic reaction to provocation but a deliberate act within a larger framework of deterrence. It struck terrorist infrastructure with precision and restraint, consciously avoiding civilian casualties and symbolic overkill. This was not a naked performance of power, but an expression of it through strategic discipline.

This moral geometry of violence—measured, deliberate, and justified—marked a clear departure from other paradigms. No longer content to be seen merely as the “responsible power” through decisive military inaction, India is asserting a new kind of responsibility: one that exercises judgement, upholds proportionality, and enforces deterrence by denial and punishment through demonstrable resolve. In doing so, New Delhi laid bare a truth Pakistan has long denied: the infrastructure of terrorism it has fostered cannot be indefinitely obscured. To acknowledge the targets would be to admit complicity— hence, Pakistan’s denial is existential necessity.

Pakistan’s retaliation—drone and missile strikes on India’s multiple military and civilian targets—revealed doctrinal inertia rather than innovation. These acts lacked the precision and clarity of Delhi’s response. India’s strikes, particularly those targeting multiple Pakistan Air Force installations, reverberated far beyond the battlefield. They sent a clear signal that the era of Indian hesitation was over. The architecture of India’s military response has been reengineered to serve a broader strategic pattern—limited, focused, and unambiguous in intent. It is a doctrine rooted not in escalation, but in denial of impunity—an evolution in the political-military decision calculus that seeks to anchor deterrence in both credibility and control.

This shift represents a departure from India’s previous strategic posture—a longstanding reliance on restraint and global goodwill. That strategy, while lauded by the international community, often yielded diminishing returns. What emerges now is a forward-looking focus on redefining power in service of order. India’s goal is no longer to define itself in opposition to Pakistan but to transcend that binary—to exit the hyphenated identity of Indo-Pakistani conflict and assert its agency on the world stage as an autonomous actor.

At the heart of this evolution lies recognition of the intimate link between power and political imagination. Strategic maturity means wielding force not for vanity or spectacle, but for the creation of a stable order conducive to national growth. India’s restraint was a calibrated message. Whether this gesture provokes reflection or defiance across the border is no longer Delhi’s immediate preoccupation. The onus has shifted; the next move belongs to Islamabad.

India’s strong-willed operational response to the Pakistan-backed terror attack showed remarkable strategic clarity, but perhaps public communication fell short. A militarily effective aerial exchange lacked sharp articulation, creating space for Pakistan’s disinformation and outdated global narratives equating victim with aggressor. Despite military gains, ambiguities persisted postconflict. A section of India’s electronic media exaggerated military outcomes and distorted facts, undermining national objectives. This misinformation gap was exploited by Pakistan’s propaganda machinery, which flooded the space with out-and-out falsehoods, obscuring India’s actions. As a result, India’s astounding battlefield success wasn’t matched by global perception. Western powers, stuck in outdated and distorted views of Kashmir, misread India’s counter-terror operation as a continuation of subcontinental rivalry between New Delhi and Islamabad. President Donald Trump’s ceasefire call further hampered India’s ability to shape the global narrative during a crucial moment.

This experience serves as a stark reminder in contemporary geopolitics: in an age where global perception can shape outcomes as much as firepower, strategic communication is integral. The modern battlefield extends beyond physical terrain and targets to include information and interpretation. While India decisively asserted its will in combat, it must now ensure it wins the broader narrative war. The sustainability of any tactical success depends not just on battlefield prowess but on the nation’s ability to align policy, perception, and purpose with consistency.

Nonetheless, what we are witnessing is not merely another chapter in the long chronicle of Indo-Pakistani antagonism; it is the slow, deliberate unmooring of a regional equilibrium once defined by a tragic symmetry. India, with all the contradictions of a rising power, begins to don the mantle of the status quo—favouring continuity over rupture, economic growth over ideological confrontation. Its gaze, increasingly fixed on the future, seeks order, markets, and recognition. Ultimately, the measure of a state’s maturity lies not in its capacity to perpetuate myths, but in its ability to reconcile ambition with the real distribution of power and legitimacy. India is inching towards that reconciliation.

Pakistan, by contrast, remains trapped in its mythology of defiance, unwilling to confront the strategic cul-de-sac into which it has steered itself. Its military establishment remains animated by the vanishing energy of a revisionist impulse, cloaked in the language of communal terrorism. Operation Sindoor neutralised a significant fraction of Pakistan’s air capabilities—crippling bases at Sargodha, Bholari, and Jacobabad—as an assertion of deterrent credibility, signalling both discipline and determination. And amid these structural tremors, General Asim Munir tightens his grip, not as a unifier but as an instrument of continuity for a militarised state. Even as he claims false victory to bolster his image, his consolidation is not aimed at national coherence but at silencing inconvenient truths—from the insurgent cries in Balochistan to the spectral remains of populist challengers like Imran Khan. Thus unfolds a tragedy: not of defeat, but of a military’s unwillingness to wake up from its own illusions.

But illusions, no matter how artfully staged or forcefully maintained, cannot forestall the reckoning indefinitely. The edifice of falsehoods—built on denial, distortion, and deflection—is beginning to crack under its own contradictions. For all its performative defiance, Islamabad cannot forever insulate itself from the cumulative costs of its duplicity. On the chessboard of South Asian geopolitics, it is not theatrical bravado that endures but the capacity to translate tactical restraint into strategic permanence. And in this realm, Pakistan finds itself increasingly disarmed—not by enemies at its gates but by the fictions within.

2025 India-Pakistan warAsim MunirIndia-Pakistan relationsOperation SindoorShehbaz Sharif