Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi established a new anti-terrorism doctrine during his ten-year reign: Any terrorist attacks from Pakistan will face a sharp Indian military response. This policy has inherent risks both internationally and domestically.
It could easily escalate India during the inter-joint campaign with Pakistan two weeks ago. At home, the anti-terrorism policy is the work of Modi's efforts to project himself as a strongman, which has its own escalation risks, as it depends both on Stoke's super-richism and maintains control.
Starting from four days earlier this month, fires between India and Pakistan gathered intensity and scope, and engagement theaters have penetrated deeper into both countries than they have been in fifty years. At home, Modi encourages his followers to be emotionally conscious. Pro-government networks and broad networks portray Pakistan as the master of Indian forces’ soon to conquer. For example, media reports say that the port of Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan and financial capital, was destroyed, which is one of many stories of difficulty breathing, and these stories are not.
Then, on the evening of May 10, President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between the two countries regarding the society of truth. The US intervention is surprising - a priest who has done some damage to the Indian Prime Minister who not only regards himself as a fierce advocate of India's strategic interests, but also as a global politician, considering major geopolitical issues such as the Ukrainian War.
Many followers of the Indian Prime Minister believe that allowing the Trump administration to promote a deal is humiliation and surrender to foreign power. Therefore, even if Pakistan praised Trump's role in ending the fight, New Delhi did not acknowledge the US's intervention in public statements in the ceasefire. Still, right-wing social media accounts lingered in a highly discerning long distance with the Modi government and its officials, many of whom attacked the personal lives of their intended targets. They attacked India's foreign minister as traitors and attacked his daughter. (The secretary quickly converts the X account to private to protect himself and his family from tempting attacks.)
Any ceasefire is necessary, and it is a surprise and disappointment for Modi's foundation, based on a combination of misinformation and a rapid victory of overestimation of India's military strength and operational advantages. This fantasy should have been pierced during the conflict, when Pakistan shot down at least two Indian jets and released drones and missiles that matched India's capabilities. In the first week of May, India launched nine air strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-managed Kashmir.
Past skirmishes with Pakistan have allowed Modi to construct a victory narrative for his domestic audience. Air strikes on Pakistan in 2019 have allowed him to re-election for a second term with a strengthened majority. But in the eyes of Modi's nationalist base, the latest exchange ended much worse: uncertain military achievements and diplomatic embarrassment.
The day after the ceasefire was announced, Trump made the situation worse in another truth-fact social post, proposing to mediate the Kashmir dispute. Mediation is a delicate theme for India due to the country's colonial experience. It is usually equivalent to an attack on India's sovereignty. After the war last year, the 1972 Simla Peace Agreement between India and Pakistan stipulated that all disputes between the two countries would be resolved bilaterally - the language has long been considered a lawyer for third-party mediation. U.S. diplomacy played a major role in curbing previous conflicts in 1999 and 2019, but Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were careful not to exaggerate their intervention in these cases.
Trump's statement immediately led to criticism from India's opposition and independence voices that began to compare with Modi and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi: Despite her indifferent relationship with President Richard Nixon, she achieved a decisive victory in the 1971 war with Pakistan. A newspaper owner in Modi's hometown of Gujarat was arrested for making a comparison.
Two days after the ceasefire was announced, the U.S. president further cheered up in a speech delivered at the White House as a potential nuclear conflict that could kill millions of people.
That night, Modi spoke during prime time for the first time since the conflict began. The lack of limiting factors for measurements may reduce the temperature after this disturbing conflict. Instead, Modi told the public that India's military offensive caused Pakistan to beg for a ceasefire. He reiterated India's position in retaliation for military operations in response to the terrorist attacks, announcing that he called Pakistan's nuclear virtual bluff and warned him that he had not given up on military operations but had simply suspended military operations. The next day, Modi gave a belliger speech the next day, when his military capabilities degrade Pakistan's military capabilities when he visited the Indian Air Force Base.
While the ceasefire is still fragile, the positive reviews of the two speeches seem to reflect Modi’s muscles in the face of public criticism and being swaggered by Trump. (Trump will narrate his role in ending conflicts several times during his trip to the Middle East, each new discourse complicating Modi’s domestic problems.)
But if the Prime Minister's positive behavior is excellent for his domestic base, it also alienates many of India's South Asian neighbors. Many of these governments are concerned about the Modi regime's tendency towards bullying, and none of them express their support for India's military operations. Last week, the Modi government, which generally did not tolerate its political opposition, recruited it into it: the movement to cause damage control: it will form a delegation of representatives from all political parties in the country with the aim of sending it to a foreign capital to give Indian cases.
The crisis and its consequences have proved that India's national security was almost entirely captured by the cult of personality of its leaders. The result is a country that others encounter while boasting about growing and stimulating criticism of its human rights record.
Hours after the ceasefire came into effect, the Indian government fine-tuned its new anti-terrorism doctrine, classifying cross-border terrorist violence as "acts of war." The policy clearly states that any such attack will trigger a response from the Indian military.
The timing of the announcement shows that Modi tried to cover up the end of the battle with powerful force and deterrence warnings. However, the doctrine may be equally prone to making conflicts between India and Pakistan more likely and recurring than less because it increases the stakes for any small-scale conflict – especially after the last four days of conflict, which is the previous threshold of violence between nuclear weapons competitors.
In the past, India has taken pride in respecting human rights and international law, a stable island in a turbulent region. Since then, Modi’s embrace of Indian nationalism and his tendency toward authoritarianism have been known in the country for its diversity and democracy. Now they lead the Indian Prime Minister into military adventurism, which could put him in danger to the entire region.