Pakistan’s former head of Strategic Plans Division (nuclear establishment) Lt Gen Khalid Kidwai’s liberal red lines, outlined to a group of Italian journalists in 2004, have become irrelevant after the advent of tactical nuclear weapons. Kidwai is now the military advisor to the National Command Authority, which decides on first use nuclear.

India does not want war of any kind as it does not want to get distracted from its intention to grow at an 8 to 10 percent clip annually. It is no longer feasible and extremely risky and dangerous to try and call out Pakistan’s nuclear bluff. Even the US has had to abandon its military operations against Iran and North Korea, not to forget Pakistan, to whom it has given “one last chance”. So, a conventional military response to proxy war, which has the potential to escalate, has been taken off the table.

In Plan B, according to some pundits, the end game is to escalate beyond surgical strikes – say a missile strike on a military facility in PoK. A conventional missile strike or a deep raid on terrorist camps in Muzaffarabad (for which we do not have the operational capability) will attract a serious punitive response from Pakistan. So this option too is off the table.