The Middle East burns again. While there is a kind of Schrödinger’s ceasefire right now, blockades and some missile strikes are still ongoing, the world watches another conflict unfold in real time. Yet for those paying attention, the current crisis only reinforces what became undeniable in May 2025: Operation Sindoor stands as the most decisive and strategically successful military campaign of the 21st century.
The 88 Hours That Changed Everything
In the span of less than four days, India demonstrated a military capability that few outside its borders had fully appreciated. Following the Pahalgam terrorist attack that killed 26 tourists, India launched precision strikes against nine terrorist infrastructure sites across Pakistan-administered territory on 7 May 2025 without the element of surprise.
What followed became a masterclass in modern integrated air defence. Indian systems intercepted approximately 450 incoming projectiles including ballistic missiles—a staggering figure that dwarfs interception tallies from any comparable modern conflict. It followed up with precision attacks on at least eight Pakistani military airbases across the country including Rahim Yar Khan, Noor Khan and Sargodha. The Chinese supplied air defence system of the Pakistanis seems to have completely collapsed resulting in Pakistan’s de facto surrender and request for a ceasefire.
The air combat results were also striking. India confirmed downing six Pakistani Air Force aircrafts, including what appears to be the largest surface-to-air missile engagement success ever recorded in military history. War and security analysts put that number to around 19. According to noted war historian Tom Cooper, six PAF aircraft were destroyed in air-to-air combat; the remainder were destroyed before they could take off!
Operation Sindoor also carries longer-term implications regarding the underperformance of Chinese-supplied air defense systems operated by Pakistan. Systems that had been marketed as peer competitors to Western and Russian alternatives failed to prevent Indian strikes from reaching their targets.
This was not an isolated data point. Subsequent reports from Venezuela and, more recently, from Iranian engagements have suggested similar patterns of underperformance. Defense procurement officials worldwide are now likely reconsidering contracts and strategic relationships built on assumptions that May 2025 called into serious question. For Beijing, this represents a significant setback—not merely in arms export revenue, but in the strategic influence that accompanies being a reliable defense partner.
The Media’s Credibility Crisis
What unfolded in legacy media newsrooms during those 88 hours deserves its own accounting. Major outlets ran Pakistani military claims as verified facts. The rush to frame a narrative outpaced the fundamental journalistic obligation to confirm.
From the very outset of the conflict—when India struck terrorist targets deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK)—sections of the international media started echoing Pakistani claims, often without evidence. When the fog cleared, much of this early reporting proved false or wildly exaggerated.
This included outright false reports such as Pakistan taking Indian soldiers prisoner (Bloomberg) and capturing a female Indian pilot (Al Jazeera).
The New York Times published a piece that acknowledged India had provided evidence of its strikes while Pakistan had not. Yet, the headline misleadingly suggested an equal conflict. The headline also carried a clear undertone of bias, downplaying the bombing of multiple Pakistani airbases as merely “limited damage.” One must ask: would even a single airstrike on a military base in Europe or the United States be treated so casually?
Moreover, rather than scrutinize the complete collapse of Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied air defense systems, these media houses continued to amplify unverified and debunked Pakistani claims with doctored images, edited videos, and laughable official statements.
The initial media coverage was disproportionately focused on Pakistani claims of having shot down Indian jets—claims made without any substantiating evidence. Even if such losses occurred for argument’s sake (no proof provided by anyone as yet one year later), they were strategically irrelevant: on May 7, India successfully conducted airstrikes at nine separate locations across Pakistan and PoJK, despite Islamabad anticipating an attack.
There may indeed have been aerial skirmishes between the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), with potential aircraft losses on both sides. Yet this does not alter the strategic outcome. For context, during the U.S.-led Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the victorious coalition lost 75 aircrafts—27 of them American.
This is not a matter of ideological bias in the conventional sense. It suggests something more troubling: institutional capture, whether through cultivated source relationships, commercial pressures, or something more deliberate. Citizens of Western democracies should be asking hard questions about how their information environment became so easily manipulated during a live conflict—and by whom.
India’s Arrival as a Military Superpower
India has been the fourth most powerful military in the world for some time now. However, it was the scale of the strategic and tactical success and the clinical precision of Operation Sindoor that really shifted the geopolitical power dynamics. It is a clear indication that we now live in a multipolar world order where India is one of the pillars of this new matrix.
No other country in the 21st century has demonstrated this kind of military superiority in a conflict, not even America, as is evident from the current Middle East situation. And while Pakistan is a borderline failed state, its military cannot be considered a total pushover. Not to forget that it also has nuclear weapons and does indulge in nuclear blackmail from time to time (Madeleine Albright called Pakistan the migraine of the world). This makes the success of Operation Sindoor even more significant.
India demonstrated the ability to conduct precision strikes, maintain air superiority, and defend its airspace against sustained attack—simultaneously. This is a capability set that places it in a very small club of nations.
The implications ripple outward. Defense partnerships are being reassessed. Nations that once looked exclusively toward Washington or Moscow for security guarantees are now examining New Delhi with fresh eyes.
US-India relations
Here is where the story takes its most consequential turn.
The Trump administration’s conduct during and after Operation Sindoor will be studied by diplomatic historians for decades. The pressure campaign against India—demanding acceptance of a narrative about the conflict’s conclusion that contradicted observable facts—was met with something Washington rarely encounters: refusal.
India declined to endorse claims it knew to be false. It refused to participate in face-saving theater designed in Washington. It maintained its position despite escalating pressure.
The 50% tariffs that followed were framed in economic terms, but no serious analyst believes the timing was coincidental.
Meanwhile, the contrast with Pakistan’s approach could not have been starker. The reported cryptocurrency transactions involving figures close to the administration. The nomination of President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif—a gesture so transparently transactional it embarrassed even sympathetic observers. The eagerness to provide whatever narrative Washington wanted in exchange for favorable treatment.
The relationship between the United States and India represented something rare: a genuine alignment of interests between the world’s two largest secular, liberal democracies.
That relationship is now damaged in ways that cannot be quickly repaired. The tariffs are a symptom, not the disease. The disease is the demonstrated willingness of one partner to demand the other accept falsehoods as the price of good relations.
While many other leaders including some of America’s closest allies from Europe to Indo-Pacific have catapulted to the whims of President Trump, it was perhaps among the biggest mistakes of his second term to underestimate the global heft and stature of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As the third time elect PM of the world’s biggest democracy and the oldest surviving civilisational state President Trump may have damaged the most consequential bilateral relationship of the 21st century for America.
We are still too close to these events to fully measure their impact. But certain contours are already visible.
A multipolar world is not merely a theoretical possibility; it is the emerging reality. The defense industry faces a reckoning over whose systems actually work under combat conditions. Western media institutions face questions about their reliability as sources of information during crises. And the assumption that democracies naturally align against authoritarian pressure has been complicated by the spectacle of Washington demanding a democracy betray the truth.
Operation Sindoor lasted 88 hours. Its consequences will perhaps shape this century.