The following discussion originally appeared in The Hindu on March 8, 2019. An excerpt is included below, with the full discussion available here.
Have we reached a point of no return? Have the air raids
into Pakistan been a successful advance in India’s strategic response to
cross-border terror?
I think there are two significant departures. One is
striking mainland Pakistan and indicating that India would not be constrained
by only Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as a retaliation point. After all, we
have had terrorist attacks outside Jammu and Kashmir in other parts of India in
the past, so why should India be limited to PoK? The second is the use of air
power.
What I do not think will change is any belief that this
will actually deter Pakistan. I don’t think that terrorist infrastructure would
be wound down tomorrow. So, in that sense, I don’t think it’s a departure. It’s
part of an evolution. The one other change has been somewhat on the diplomatic
front... the reactions of the U.S., Europe, Australia and others, and to a
lesser extent the Gulf countries, in terms of accepting India’s strike as
pre-emptive self-defence
Read the full exchange here.