The ‘free hand’ given to the military has been much acclaimed as a major reason for the operational results of Operation Sindoor. It will likely figure as a replicable lesson in the promised future iterations of Operation Sindoor. However, not only must this lesson be reviewed in light of the constraints of the nuclear age, but Operation Sindoor could do with a reexamination, warts and all.

Attempting one here leads to an opposite conclusion: that the free hand given in Operation Sindoor amounted to political abdication. Consequently, the lesson to the contrary is that more intimate political oversight of the operational aspects in the military sphere befits appropriate civil-military relations in the nuclear age.

The popularly imagined ideal type has political and military circles adjacent to each other but with an overlap in-between. In the space jointly shared, the political supersedes military considerations. Outside the overlap is the essentially military space, on which matters are adjudicated with a professional lens. Yet, for military accountability to political masters the entire military circle is subject to political oversight.

Ideally, the political level sets the agenda and gives the military the necessary autonomy to execute it, with the degree of ‘freedom of action’ depending on the confidence the political leadership has in its chosen military leaders and the political delicacy of the operation. Even so, this is seldom an uncomplicated relationship; an example being the friction between Count Bismarck and General von Moltke.

Today, distinguishing ‘essentially military matters’ – from which the political class must maintain a respectful distance by leaving these to professional minds – is rendered more difficult by the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons. Indeed, a principal impact of the nuclear age on military matters has been to restrict the scope of military; lest, in pursuit of autonomy, the military overstep the constraints placed on the use of armed force by the nuclear imperative.

An early nuclear theorist, Bernard Brodie, had it that the military’s role in the nuclear age is but to deter war and not to wage one. From recent revelations on Operation Sindoor, it appears that this insight on the nuclear dimension is being given a dangerously short shrift.

A nuclear context to the free hand

In........

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