In the high-stakes game of nations, it isn’t always armies on the move that signal a new reality; sometimes, a few carefully spoken words are enough to change the entire board. This is what happened when Pakistan’s top military spokesman, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, spoke to The Economist.

His interview was more than a routine warning to India. It was the moment the old rulebook was torn up, signaling a profound shift in South Asia’s balance of power and wiping away the core assumptions that have guided New Delhi’s war planners for decades.

Lt. Gen. Chaudhry’s declaration that any future Indian aggression would trigger a response that would “begin from the east of India” with a “deep strike inside” the country is the clearest articulation yet of Pakistan’s mature Full Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) posture. For too long, Indian military planners have operated with the comfort of strategic depth, viewing their nation’s vast eastern expanse as an untouchable........

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