Defence Ministry Outlines Shift to Deterrence by Punishment

Traditional Indian security thinking centred on defending territorial borders through fortifications and troop deployment along the frontier. This view was shaped by the wars with Pakistan and China and later formalised through India's nuclear posture. In 2003, the Cabinet Committee on Security adopted a No First Use doctrine, but specified that any retaliation to a first nuclear strike would be "massive" and designed to inflict unacceptable damage. This combination of restraint with a threat of massive retaliation is an early instance of punishment-based deterrence logic, even though conventional military strategy long leaned toward deterrence by denial. Global thinking on security had already begun widening beyond a military-only frame well before this. The 1994 UNDP Human Development Report argued that security must cover economic, food, health and community dimensions, not just armies and borders.

This broadening has become more urgent as new technologies change how threats reach a state. Drones increasingly cross borders undetected by conventional patrolling. India's own experience along the Punjab border with Pakistan illustrates this: drones have repeatedly been used to smuggle weapons and narcotics, and individual drones within a coordinated swarm can communicate with each other, making them harder to intercept with a single countermeasure. GPS spoofing is one commonly used technique to disrupt such drones. The same fluidity applies to cyberattacks on power grids and to disinformation campaigns, both of which operate entirely outside physical space. This is also why internal-security analysis routinely looks beyond the Pakistan border alone: threats along the Bangladesh and Myanmar borders and the Line of Control range from arms and drug smuggling to insurgent infiltration, requiring coordination among the Border Security Force, Assam Rifles, and the Army.