Recently a group of politicians from New Delhi visited Seoul as a part of the Indian government’s global outreach with regard to its military as well as diplomatic responses to the brutal terrorist attack on April 22 in Pahalgam, a popular resort area located in India’s Jammu & Kashmir region. The ‘all- party parliamentary delegation’ met with various stakeholders, including their counterparts in the Korean National Assembly, senior officials in the Korean Foreign Ministry as well as a dozen think tank experts. They explained India’s position and rationale behind the “Operation Sindoor” conducted by the Indian Armed Forces (IAF) on May 7, which included surgical strikes on terror bases not only in Pakistan-Occupied Jammu & Kashmir but also within Pakistan territory.

Given that the attack was one of the most serious civilian-targeted strikes in India in recent years and the modus operandi of the terrorists was to specifically target non-Muslims intended to incite religious divisions among Indians, it is quite notable that India exercised restraint and responded in a “targeted, precise, controlled and measured” manner. The delegation has underscored that the restraint, however, is not a sign of India’s weakness; rather it represents a “new normal” in its counter-terrorism policy, and in particular, a new position of “no tolerance against terrorism in all kinds of forms and manifestations.”

While bilateral relations with Pakistan are fraught with a long history of disputes over Jammu & Kashmir and terrorist attacks on civilians, New Delhi appears to have no appetite to shake up the current status quo with Islamabad. India has little to gain from escalating the provocations because Pakistan is no longer deemed capable of posing systemic security threats. In fact, Islamabad has been mired in serious economic crises in recent years and struggled to put its house in order by relying on IMF rescue programmes.

In contrast, India has managed to rise to global prominence by making steady but impressive economic progress as well as dramatically improving its international status and influence through proactive diplomatic manoeuvers of “all-alignment”. With the ever-widening gaps in comprehensive national power, New Delhi’s strategic community no longer regards Islamabad as the primary threat to its national security. This is why IAF was confident enough to engage in counter-strikes deep into Pakistan territory in spite of Islamabad’s strong allusion to an escalation of full-scale confrontation between the two nuclear powers.

However, strategic stability to contain any possibility for nuclear escalation remains an important priority for India. In this regard, it is imperative for India to maintain a balance between its position of nuclear restraint and the new policy of “no tolerance” that promises significant scaling-up of its future military responses against any possible terrorist attacks.

Also, the short-lived military standoff with Islamabad illustrates the extent to which the long-lasted Beijing-Islamabad nexus poses challenges to India, not to mention India’s complicated relations with China. While China stayed neutral as a disinterested third-party on the surface, there is no doubt that it was China-made weapons and Chinese intelligence that greatly facilitated Islamabad’s staging of counter-strikes against New Delhi’s initial measures targeting the terrorist strongholds. In this respect, the Beijing- Islamabad nexus remains a persistent strategic challenge for New Delhi in the foreseeable future.

From New Delhi’s standpoint, it may be that some inconsistencies and even ‘inaccuracies’ exist in the way that international media covered the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor. New Delhi must have felt an urgent need to enhance its public diplomacy efforts to garner global solidarity and support for its “new normal” counter-terrorism policy. In fact, that is the key reason behind the Indian government’s decision for the unprecedented diplomatic campaign to task seven groups of ‘all-party delegation’ to visit 33 countries.

As the Vice Minister of Korean Foreign Affairs made clear in his meeting with the delegation, Seoul maintains its firm position that “terrorism cannot be justified under any circumstances.” In this respect, the delegation’s visit to Seoul provides a fresh opportunity to reaffirm not only their shared commitments to counter terrorism but also broader strategic convergences across the board.

However, it is noteworthy that the delegation’s visit was an exception rather than a regularity in the recent history of high-level exchanges between the two countries. New Delhi, as well as Seoul, needs to fill in these gaps in their bilateral relations, which is expected of the ‘Special Strategic Partnership’ that they established in 2015, and make further efforts to tap into the huge potential that their mutual relations entail.

Finally, as South Korea’s new government just inaugurated after a by-election last week, it is opportune time for Seoul and New Delhi to take a fresh look at each other and renew efforts to go beyond their narrow-minded notion of ‘reciprocity’ that has long stood in the way of their bilateral ties.

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