United Service Institution of India

About the Occasional Paper

This occasional paper examines three interlocking dimensions of Indian strategic thought: strategic culture as an analytical category; the evolution of threat perception and the use of force, particularly the erosion of strategic restraint; and the changing institutional landscape of civil-military relations. It argues that these constitute a single system under continuous renegotiation: strategic culture provides the durable grammar, threat perception and force employment the sentences written within it, and civil-military institutions the mechanisms through which these are debated and executed. Indian strategic culture is presented not as a coherent doctrine but as a contest among Nehruvian, neoliberal and hyperrealist strands, whose relative influence shifts with political leadership and external shocks. The paper traces India’s response to cross-border terrorism from the diplomatic-coercive restraint of 2001 and 2008, through the bounded strikes of 2016 and 2019, to Operation Sindoor in 2025, characterised as a doctrinal inflexion without representing an abandonment of restraint. India’s posture towards China, however, has not undergone a comparable shift, resulting in a two-track threat architecture. In civil-military relations, the paper traces the transition from control through separation to post-2019 reforms, including the Chief of Defence Staff, the Inter-Services Organisation Act 2023, and integrated theatre commands. It identifies civilian sponsorship of military jointness as the more consequential change and concludes with recommendations for bridging the gap between organisational jointness and doctrinal, strategic planning and net-assessment capacity.