India’s war with Pakistan resets global geo-political military matrix despite media propaganda
The recent conflict between India and Pakistan triggered by the horrific terrorist attack in Pahalgam, India on 22 April has been a game changer in geo-politics.
While no one doubted India’s military might (it has consistently ranked fourth in the global military power index behind US, Russia and China), the scale and precision of the damage India inflicted on Pakistan has reset global military matrix and will have long term consequences for the world’s arms markets.
Pakistan, while not in the top tier of the world’s best armed forces, is ranked 12th on the same index. So at least on paper it was never militarily considered a lightweight even though its economy and political structure is wanting.
What India’s strategic decimation of Pakistan signals is that its military power is far greater than many security analysts had previously assessed. On May 7, 2025, India launched missile strikes deep into Pakistani territory—without the element of surprise—targeting key terror infrastructure.
Just two nights later, it followed up with precision attacks on at least eight Pakistani military airbases across the country including Rahim Yar Khan and Sarghoda. The Chinese supplied air defence system of the Pakistanis seems to have completely collapsed resulting in Pakistan’s defacto surrender and request for a ceasefire.
According to well-known combat veteran and security analyst John Spencer, after just four days of calibrated military action, it was objectively conclusive: India achieved a massive victory.
“Operation Sindoor met and exceeded its strategic aims—destroying terrorist infrastructure, demonstrating military superiority, restoring deterrence, and unveiling a new national security doctrine. This was not symbolic force. It was decisive power, clearly applied.”
John who is also Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at Modern War Institute, West Point, added that ‘Operation Sindoor’ was not about occupation or regime change and critics who argue India should have gone further are missing the point.
India is the only country in the 21st century to have secured such a swift and decisive military victory against another nation, achieving its strategic objectives with remarkable precision.
This conflict could mark a turning point in modern warfare, where non-state actors will no more be delinked from the states sponsoring them and a terror attack will be seen as an act of war.
This also marked the first instance of a direct military confrontation between two nuclear-armed nations with India sending a clear message that it will not be deterred by nuclear blackmail. In a recent address to the nation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated;
“We will take strict action at every place from where the roots of terrorism emerge. India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail. India will strike precisely and decisively at the terrorist hideouts developing under the cover of nuclear blackmail.”
Some reports suggest that India targeted areas near Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities, though both nations have officially denied these claims.
What India has achieved with Operation Sindoor is unprecedented in the modern era, not just militarily but diplomatically as well. Not a single major power—including those historically considered unfriendly toward India—criticized the strikes on carefully selected terror targets within Pakistan. This tacit global acceptance effectively legitimizes India’s new doctrine on counterterrorism.
Regarding U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks on the conflict, there has been a noticeable shift in tone. Initially, he claimed that his administration had ‘brokered’ the ceasefire between India and Pakistan by leveraging trade—a claim India dismissed. However, in his latest statement made in Qatar, Trump struck a more measured note, saying, “I won’t say I did it, but I sure as hell helped settle the problem between India and Pakistan.”
Well known Austrian war historian Tom Cooper has said that India brought Pakistan’s to its knees and that India’s military strength has stunned the world. Commenting on the situation, Tom observed that Pakistan was in deep shock following the overwhelming dominance displayed by the Indian Armed Forces. He noted that this may be the first such decisive military victory by any country since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when the U.S.-led coalition defeated Iraq.
Former Pentagon official and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin added that there is absolutely no spin that the Pakistani military can put on what occurred to shield themselves from the full reality of the fact that they not only lost, but they lost very, very badly.
Role of Legacy Media
In a troubling trend, sections of the international legacy media appeared to serve as propaganda platforms for Pakistan, even as clear evidence of India’s overwhelming military success was widely available.
For example, media coverage was disproportionately focused on Pakistani claims of having shot down Indian jets—claims made without any substantiating evidence. Even if such losses occurred for arguments sake (no proof provided by anyone as yet), they were strategically irrelevant: on May 7, India successfully conducted airstrikes at nine separate locations across Pakistan, despite Islamabad anticipating an attack.
To put this in perspective, it’s akin to reporting Alexander the Great’s invasion of Persia like this: “King Darius III claims 50 Macedonian chariots were destroyed. Experts note these chariots were drawn by elite Russian-bred horses. However, Persian forces—bolstered by superior Chinese steeds—won the day.” Such reporting misses the larger picture entirely.
There may indeed have been aerial skirmishes between the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), with potential aircraft losses on both sides. Yet this does not alter the strategic outcome: India dismantled Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied air defense system and exposed the vulnerabilities of both Chinese weaponry and Turkish drones.
In fact, during a press briefing, Indian Air Marshal A.K. Bharati confirmed that India had shot down Pakistani Air Force jets—a significant detail that was conspicuously absent from the headlines of international media outlets.
For context, during the U.S.-led Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the victorious coalition lost 75 aircrafts—27 of them American.
India’s own air defense systems successfully intercepted a wave of retaliatory attacks from Pakistan, including incoming missiles—demonstrating resilience, advanced technological capability and cutting-edge innovation.
The reporting that followed India’s strikes on Pakistani military airbases—some of which were confirmed by uploaded videos with visibly shaken Pakistanis—was, also at times, disingenuous.
For instance, The New York Times published a piece that acknowledged India had provided evidence of its strikes while Pakistan had not.
Yet, the headline misleadingly suggested an equal conflict. The headline also carried a clear undertone of bias, downplaying the bombing of multiple Pakistani airbases as merely “limited damage.” One must ask: would even a single airstrike on a military base in Europe or the United States be treated so casually?
From the very outset of the conflict—when India struck terrorist targets deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK)—sections of the international media started echoing Pakistani claims, often without evidence.
This included false reports such as Pakistan taking Indian soldiers prisoner (Bloomberg), capturing a female Indian pilot (Al Jazeera), and claims that India was the first to request a ceasefire (CNN).
On the other hand, most international media outlets failed to report that Abdul Rauf Azhar, a senior Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) commander long suspected of orchestrating the December 2002 abduction, torture and beheading of WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl was reportedly killed in Indian strikes.
This signals a troubling phenomenon unfolding in the West. The issue isn’t simply about credibility—mainstream media outlets had already lost much of that after peddling the false narrative of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. In that case though they acted on behest of their Governments.
The slanted coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, where Russia apparently has been losing the war from the get go can also be explained from a biased national perspective since Russia is seen as an adevrsary of western nations.
But the recent coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, and now India’s operations against Pakistan’s terror infrastructure, marks a more dangerous turn: parts of the Western press appear to be actively doing propaganda on behalf of terrorist sympathizers.
Worse still, they seem to be lending credibility to a state like Pakistan—a country that received billions in Western aid only to channel funds to terrorist groups that killed Western soldiers. A country where the world’s most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden was living next to a military cantonement in a sprawling house as if he were a guest of the state.
Rather than scrutinize the complete collapse of Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied air defense systems, these media houses continued to amplify unverified and debunked Pakistani claims with doctored images, edited videos, and laughable official statements.
Let us not forget: Pakistan’s military has a history of deceit, including its shameful refusal to acknowledge its dead soldiers after the 1999 Kargil War—men who were ultimately given proper burials by the Indian Army.
While these developments have no bearing on India or for that matter Israel, having enemy assets embedded within the media establishment could prove disastrous if the war was to ever reach home. A compromised media with trojan horses within the fourth estate could shape public perception, influence policy, and could tip the scales between victory and defeat.
It is imperative that security agencies scrutinize whether some of these propagandists are acting independently or operating—directly or indirectly—under the influence or payroll of hostile foreign powers.
Recent developments also make it increasingly clear that Australia cannot rely on the United States for its national security. From the chaotic and humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, to Washington’s failure to prevent the Russia-Ukraine war, and now its reluctance to back a key QUAD partner in counter-terrorism operations, the U.S. appears to lack both the will and the strategic clarity to support its allies in the Indo-Pacific.
In contrast, India has emerged as the only dependable partner in the region—capable, willing, and assertive enough to counterbalance an increasingly aggressive China.Multicultural tourism packages
Pakistan which is an Islamic Republic, is on its 25th IMF bailout package. It is effectively controlled by its military, led by Army Chief Asim Munir—a general known for his communal and bigoted views, including the belief that Hindus and Muslims are inherently different and that his own culture is ‘superior’.
The current Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) in Pakistan, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry who invoked ‘Jihad’ in his briefing and clearly stated that ‘Islam’ was a part of their training, is the son of Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a US designated terrorist.
India is the world’s largest secular liberal democracy and the world’s fifth largest economy. The briefings on Operation Sindoor in India, while it was ongoing, were led by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and two senior female officers from the armed forces—Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, a Hindu, and Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, a Muslim. The difference between the two armed forces could not be more stark.
Pakistani society appears to have become so septic that despite clear visual evidence of the attacks and a well-documented history of using terrorism as an instrument of state policy, it remains in denial—unwilling to acknowledge either the reality of terror emanating from its soil or the decisive blow delivered by India.
A society that refuses to confront its own failures and instead clings to mass delusions is not only a threat to itself, but also to the broader international community.
Nearly two decades ago, the late U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described Pakistan as an “international migraine.”
In 2011, the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, warned that “you can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors”—a pointed reference to Pakistan’s continued support for terrorist groups. Sadly, those warnings remain as relevant today as they were then.
