I strongly condemn the cowardly attack on our jawans.
But some realities have to be understood.
It is almost impossible to prevent each and every attack by an enemy or terrorist group.
As a former UK Prime Minister said
'We. have to succeed every time but the terrorists have to succeed only once'
This was mentioned in respect to the Irish Republican Army attacks.
So some attacks will happen in spite of our best efforts.
No need to get hysterical. Even the Israelis cannot prevent every attack.
Neither could even the superpowers. Both the US and Russia have suffered terror attacks. Happened on their own territory.
But prepare for our response. Think about how we will hit back.
The costs for the enemy has to be raised.
So let us debate on the punishment we meet out to Pakistan.
Fix of violence is violence. There is no substitute of it. Learn how power differential work and how a state must ligetimise voilence to keep the order.
The game is not about how to bring down attacks to ‘zero’ but how to out-attack each other and keep doing it by gradually increasing or adjusting the sting; better outmatched.
It is called investment in offensive methods which not only addresses war making tactical hardware but grooming of the population to keep participating in it.
Investment in maintaining a robust Deterrence do play an important part to afford luxury like strategic restraint but not failing it by showing compulsive lack of intent not only gives wrong signaling and increase the chances of attacks by an over confident enemy but also demoralise security establishment and then population.
Once you increase your strategic threshold and lock your deterrence in a proverbial ‘no first use’ locker; the tactical, asymmetric warfare becomes a must to handle rogue nations like Pakistan and China. With China we are still very cautiously almost negligible matching to their sub-strategic interferences. On Pakistan we must go like an enraged trampling Elephant who is roaring them them start an all out war.