Sushant Sareen warns: 'India must retaliate beyond thresholds or lose deterrence to Pakistan'

The massacre of over two dozen Hindu tourists in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam by Pakistan-linked terrorists is more than a tragic act of terrorism — it's a deliberate provocation aimed at reigniting conflict and undermining Indian diplomacy, says security analyst Sushant Sareen.

Sareen, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, described the massacre as a "tipping point" and a direct challenge to India's strategic posture. “The attack has plunged the region into a serious crisis, one that could lead to a military conflagration between India and Pakistan,” he writes in ORF.

He argued that India must now break free from its longstanding “threshold trap” — the ambiguous notion of waiting for a specific magnitude of attack before retaliating. “Is the threshold crossed if five soldiers are killed? Or is it 10, 20, 50? What is the threshold for civilians being murdered by Pakistani terrorists?” Sareen asked. “It is time for India to get over this threshold trap and establish an effective, ruthless, and fearsome deterrence.”

In Sareen's view, public expectation post-Balakot and Surgical Strikes demands a robust military response. “If [Modi] does not take action, he will not only lose political support but also undermine the deterrence sought during the earlier strikes.”

But any response must be sustained, he cautioned. “Until and unless India is militarily prepared to climb up the escalation ladder and dominate it, the impact of any military action will be limited...If India doesn’t climb up the escalation ladder by retaliating to Pakistan’s response, it will mean that Pakistan has established deterrence, not India.”

Sareen suggested that India's military options could begin with ending the LoC ceasefire and using artillery and rockets to strike inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Such pressure, he argued, would stretch Pakistan's resources, already strained by insurgencies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

Pakistan, he added, will undoubtedly retaliate, "but does India have enough bunkers to secure the civilian population and the military personnel, or did it waste the four years of ceasefire basking in the sun?" 

Apart from heating the border, Sareen said, India can target terrorist bases and perhaps Pakistan military establishments using artillery, air power, or missiles. "To be sure, Pakistan will respond. India needs to absorb these attacks and go up the escalation ladder." 

India must also be prepared to absorb retaliation. “Any action based on ‘the other side won’t escalate beyond a point’ is based on a heroic assumption… dangerously delusional.”

Beyond military strikes, Sareen called for aggressive steps across economic and diplomatic fronts. Among the actions he suggested are unilaterally abrogating the Indus Waters Treaty, banning Pakistani players from the IPL and pushing for their isolation in global sports, blacklisting companies that operate in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, cutting off life-saving drug exports to Pakistan, and penalising Indian businesses that hire Pakistanis for films or music productions.

"The implications for Pakistan’s security will be extremely damaging,” Sareen wrote, suggesting even the unrest in Sindh could be tactically leveraged. He stressed that "India needs to absorb these attacks and go up the escalation ladder".  

The real challenge, he said, is whether New Delhi has the strategic clarity and stockpiles to sustain that escalation — and the will to do so without fear or hesitation.