India’s recent attempts to reframe the outcome of the May 2025 military crisis reveal more about its internal anxieties than any real strategic analysis. The recent statement by India’s Deputy Army Chief, Lt Gen Rahul Singh declaring Pakistan merely acted as a “front” while others, especially China, tested military technology is less an assessment of battlefield facts and more a political deflection aimed at salvaging a narrative of strength after a clear miscalculation.
A Narrative of Strategic Denial
The central claim that Pakistan was simply a testing ground for Chinese weapons ignores the sovereign agency and operational competence of Pakistan’s military which Pakistan clearly demonstrated on multiple fronts including aviation and electronic warfare. For India to maintain that it wasn’t defeated by Pakistan, but by a supposed coalition of adversaries, is both misleading and dangerous. It is a strategy of denial, outsourcing your enemy’s strength to others, in order to avoid confronting your own weaknesses.
In reality, the facts of the May 2025 crisis are clear and uncomfortable for New Delhi. India initiated the escalation. Pakistan absorbed the initial shock, responded with calibrated force across multiple domains, including drone swarms, precision strikes, and electronic warfare and compelled India into Director General Military Operations (DGMO)-level talks. It wasn’t China, Turkey, or any other power sitting across the table. It was Pakistan acting alone, in defense of its sovereignty.
‘Live Lab’ Claims and India’s Own Military Credibility
India’s Deputy Army Chief Lt Gen Rahul Singh narrative also attempts to undermine Pakistan’s use of Chinese hardware by claiming it acted as a “live lab” for foreign weapons testing. Even if 81% of Pakistan’s military platforms are Chinese, the question India must confront is why its own high-end Western, Russian, and Israeli systems including French aircraft, American surveillance tech and Israeli drones failed to prevent critical security breaches. If Pakistan’s imported tools are the issue, why did India’s own imported tools perform so poorly? The answer lies not in technology, but in doctrine, training, and operational clarity areas where India’s assumptions failed strategically as the world is gradually getting accustomed to by the Indian military officials themselves.
The suggestion that Pakistan’s performance was not indigenous but externally enabled is also insulting to India’s own credibility. If India believes it was outmaneuvered by a so called proxy force running foreign equipment, then what does that say about its own readiness and competence as a supposed regional hegemon? Claiming your adversary is simply a puppet while failing to contain them reveals a deeper strategic dysfunction, one that no amount of narrative control can fix.
Pakistan’s Solo Response, India’s Multinational Excuses
India’s Lt Gen Rahul Singh framing of the conflict as a multi-front war with China, Turkey, and others supposedly acting in tandem with Pakistan is largely a projection designed for Western consumption. It recasts India as a victim of a broader strategic encirclement, diverting attention from the basic truth: the May 2025 confrontation was bilateral. China may have observed, Turkey may have extended political sympathy, but the response, coordination, and execution came from Pakistan and Pakistan alone.
What the May 2025 crisis truly revealed is that military superiority is not about whose weapons come from where. It’s about how those weapons are used. Strategy, not supplier, wins battles. India had the advantage on paper, but Pakistan both on civil-military levels had clarity on the ground. The failure was not in technology, it was in India’s misreading of the deterrence ladder, its belief that Pakistan wouldn’t respond, and its overconfidence in escalation dominance at hands of its supposed global alliances.
Strategic Miscalculation, Not Foreign Interference
India now finds itself trying to explain away what happened. And in that effort, it is shifting the blame from internal failures to external conspiracies. But what they truly needs to understand is that, denial is not a strategy it’s a liability. When militaries underestimate their adversaries and attribute their strength to others, they stop preparing for the actual threat. This is not just a political mistake, it is a recipe for future failure.
Before India’s Deputy Army Chief Lt Gen Rahul Singh contemplates more aggressive doctrines or fantasizes about targeting civilian centers in any future confrontation, it would be wise to study the aftermath of May 2025. The strategic, political, and reputational wreckage from that crisis still lingers. The next war won’t be won through better PR or foreign blame games, it will be decided by clarity, competence, and humility. And Pakistan has already demonstrated it has all three.
