It has been a year since a clash between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan alarmed the world. In the months since, while India has laid down a ‘new normal’ for Pakistan, it has also learnt some hard foreign policy lessons. The punitive strikes that began on May 7 and ended on May 10 were followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation on May 12, where he said that after the surgical strike of 2016 and the air strike of 2019, now, “Operation Sindoor is India’s policy against terrorism”. The three pillars of the ‘new normal’ have been spelt out — guaranteed response to future terrorist attacks; no differentiation between state or non-state actors behind terrorist attacks; and nuclear blackmail not to be treated as a hurdle in targeting terrorist infrastructure.…