India for the last three decades has been searching ways to maintain conventional military choices below the nuclear threshold evident in its military doctrines. Each of the progressive doctrines, on the other hand, has been met by an evolving Pakistani deterrent system designed to remove that particular dimension.
Indeed, the latest episode in this saga is India’s own nod to this trend: The Chief of Defense Staff’s “Six Shifts” presentation and the RAKSHA defense diplomacy strategy, both of which were unveiled in September 2026, are New Delhi’s acknowledgements that it has been following a reactive military strategy ever since General K. Sundarji introduced the concept of “Strike Corps” in the 1980s.
Yet, it is clear from history that the reason why that reactionary attitude has persisted so long isn’t mentioned in these records. The answer lies in Pakistan’s “Full Spectrum Deterrence” doctrine, the implementation of which has led to the addition of “battlefield-nuclear layer” to the strategic one in the year 2011. FSD hindered several military policies in India. It complicated multiple Indian military strategies.
It restricted the entire rational domain for a standard Indian onslaught against Pakistan that might occur without inciting nuclear action and this restriction, more than any individual weapon system, is what has led India to fluctuate between doctrine and semi-doctrine for fifteen years.
To comprehend why FSD constitutes deterrence rather than mere bluster, it is beneficial to contextualize it inside a term employed by international relations theorists since the Cold War: the stability-instability paradox, initially proposed by Glenn Snyder.
The irony is that achieving a fragile strategic balance between two nuclear powers that neither can destroy the other’s ability to retaliate makes conventional and sub-conventional warfare more likely, rather than less, than the apprehension of a nuclear conflict.
If neither side is likely to go so far as to make mutual destruction a real possibility, states are more free to explore at the lowest rung of the ladder to the extent that strategic deterrence is the highest rung.
The Cold Start doctrine that India has developed, as a reaction to the slow mobilization during Operation Parakram in 2001-02, is a clear example of the use of this dichotomy in the strategic domain. Cold Start’s Integrated Battle Groups were meant to wreak damage in a superficial way as soon as possible before the international community could react, thus keeping the conflict “limited” that Pakistan would supposedly not have a rational reason for nuclear escalation over an issue of mere kilometers.
The move was an attempt to turn around the “risk that permits uncertainty” as Schelling called it in India’s case, wagering that it can operate below Pakistan’s nuclear threshold.
The response from Pakistan was to completely do away with the stability-instability paradox. This was the doctrine of Full Spectrum Deterrence and was embodied by the short range Nasr (Hatf-IX) missile. Islamabad’s actions were quite different in terms of conventional military growth from India. Battlefield-range nuclear weapons were introduced to specifically target Indian military formations in Pakistan. It came down the ladder.
As far as the aforementioned goal of Pakistan’s shortest-range nuclear capability was concerned, there was no safe place for the Integrated Battle Groups of Cold Start to come to during the “conventional conflict” and “nuclear confrontation. For deterrence theory, FSD is a deterrence by denial approach at all levels of deterrence, not just at the top level of deterrence.
In terms of cost it is an unacceptable cost in theory and it also infringes upon the particular operational framework on which the Indian philosophy depended.
Originating from Bernard Brodie’s postwar perception that the central mission of military forces has changed from winning wars to deterring them, realist deterrence theory offers a simple test: does deterrence affect the opponent’s assessment of expected value before the decision to engage in warfare is made, or only afterwards?
In this examination it is found that FSD’s success is not confined to any particular war but India has never really carried out the Cold Start. Financial aid was delayed, military reorganization was hampered and India was still struggling with a doctrine that it had not fully matured in the last two decades, when Operation Sindoor began in May 2025.
A clear strategic outcome emerges from Cold Start and Full Spectrum Deterrence. However, despite the Cold Start being just a theoretical doctrine, India had spent years developing a plan to overcome the disadvantages of a Pakistani nuclear arsenal. On the other hand, Pakistan’s Full Spectrum Deterrence was a reaction to every step of India’s military approach and had placed a restriction on the implementation of the Indian military initiatives.
The importance of FSD is not only that it counters India’s nuclear power but it can shape the nation’s military strategy before war breaks out. The ongoing changes in the doctrines, force structure and strategic doctrine in India, despite two decades of trying to carry out the Cold Start, implies that it has not been easy to achieve the original purpose.
The transition from Cold Start to Full Spectrum Deterrence is a story of an aggressive approach which has always been met with a responsive deterrence approach that has been an obstruction to its effectiveness in operation.
