Deterrence is not a static possession; it is a performance, an act of will repeatedly staged before an audience of adversaries who test its authenticity with every provocation. As Thomas Schelling argued, it is not brute force that deters, but the artful manipulation of risk and consequence. However, when the adversary is not a rational state pursuing defined interests, but a militarised theocracy masquerading as a republic, one that nurtures jihadist proxies as instruments of state policy, deterrence ceases to function in classical terms. It becomes unstable, reactive, and dangerously porous.

Robert Jervis long warned that deterrence depends less on capability than on perception, and misperceptions, especially when willful, can cause it to collapse altogether. Pakistan’s deep state does not merely misunderstand signals; it distorts them, weaponises ambiguity, and thrives on the fog of war it helps create.

Pakistan’s doctrine of “death by a thousand cuts" is an institutional strategy cultivated over decades. First articulated in the wake of the 1971 war, and pursued with renewed intensity after the failures of conventional engagements, this doctrine reflects the Pakistani Army’s conviction that it cannot match India in open battle, but can bleed it through relentless, low-intensity conflict. Its strategic depth lies not in geography, but in deniability, in a complex ecosystem of terror outfits, training camps, and ideological sanctuaries nurtured by the state and its intelligence agencies. From the Kargil infiltration of 1999, which was planned even as Pakistan feigned diplomacy, to the 2001 Parliament attack, the 2008 Mumbai carnage, and the Pulwama suicide bombing in 2019, Pakistan has repeatedly demonstrated that terrorism is not a........

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