India's Transformative Security Doctrine: From Restraint to Strategic Autonomy After Operation Sindoor

Operation Sindoor: India struck terror and military infrastructure deep inside Pakistan

New Delhi:

India is experiencing a significant shift in its national security approach, moving away from decades of predictable restraint toward a more assertive doctrine based on pre-emption, coercive leverage, and strategic autonomy.

Military scholar John Spencer and foreign policy expert Dr. Lauren Dagan Amoss have published a new analysis indicating that India has crossed a "doctrinal threshold" that is fundamentally altering the deterrence dynamics in South Asia.

For decades, India's measured responses to major Pakistan-based terrorist attacks—Uri (2016), Balakot (2019), and Pahalgam (2025)—operated under the belief that restraint would prevent escalation.

However, Spencer and Amoss argue that "limited and predictable retaliation had not deterred cross-border terrorism. It had enabled it." This predictability created "space to prepare the next attack," ultimately making restraint itself a strategic vulnerability.

Operation Sindoor, launched following another high-casualty attack, demonstrates the profound nature of India's doctrinal transformation.

The authors clearly state: "India has crossed a doctrinal threshold. It is no longer a state that responds to terrorism with calibrated warnings or waits for international partners to validate its choices."

The military operation featured deep strikes, drone swarms, loitering munitions, and precision long-range fires—evidence of an approach where "pre-emption is considered a sovereign right."

Significantly, this shift represents a permanent change. "This evolution is institutional, not episodic," the authors note, emphasizing that India's deterrence is now "pattern-based rather than event-based," influenced equally by national sentiment and strategic imperatives.

Public expectations for rapid retaliation have become a compelling political force, reducing opportunities for restraint.

John Spencer serves as Chair of War Studies at the Madison Policy Forum and Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute. He co-authored Understanding Urban Warfare.

Dr. Lauren Dagan Amoss specializes in India's foreign and security policy, with expertise in deterrence, nuclear doctrine, and India-Pakistan crisis dynamics. She is a Research Fellow at the BESA Centre and a member of the Deborah Forum for women in foreign and security policy.

India is also transforming its diplomatic framework. During the 2025 ceasefire negotiations with Pakistan, Delhi "rejected all external mediation"—deliberately abandoning earlier approaches.

The authors emphasize this was not merely tactical but doctrinal: "India now treats crises with Pakistan as regionally internal." Even established agreements are being reevaluated through a security-first perspective. The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty is described as "the first deliberate use of a resource-sharing treaty as coercive leverage," reflecting a position that stabilizing arrangements "now survive only if they reinforce India's security narrative."

Regarding nuclear posture, India maintains its No First Use declaration, but with increased ambiguity. Leaders have indicated a shift from assured retaliation to "assured punishment," a formulation that "narrows the room for adversary miscalculation." Developments including MIRVs, canisterized missiles, and routine SSBN patrols underscore that India's deterrent "is no longer symbolic."

Notably, the analysis identifies China as "the silent second audience." India's neutralization of Chinese-origin weapons during Operation Sindoor provided both operational advantages and strategic messaging to Beijing.

The overall picture reveals a nation deliberately redefining its strategic approach. "India is not becoming reckless. It is becoming coherent," Spencer and Amoss conclude. The world, they caution, must now "catch up" to a country aligning doctrine, technology, public expectations, and geopolitical signaling under a single principle: security achieved by India, on India's terms.