Don’cha just hate being right? As I warned last week, the recent Islamic terror attack in Pahalgam, in India-administered Kashmir, threatens to bring the two nuclear-armed nations into open war. Not that I claim to any particularly sagacious foreign policy insight: Blind Freddy could see that some kind of shootin’ war was on the cards. The question is whether we’re looking at a full subcontinental war with possible added nuclear sauce.
Well, the shootin’ war’s started. Will it escalate, or, having ruffled their feathers and rattled their sabres, will both sides back down into the same Mexican standoff they’ve been playing for decades?
India’s military struck nine sites inside Pakistan early on Wednesday, killing at least 31 people in retaliation for last month’s massacre of tourists in Indian Kashmir and sparking deadly reprisal attacks from Islamabad that have once again brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.
India’s foreign ministry insisted it targeted terrorist infrastructure inside Pakistan in “non-escalatory and proportionate” air strikes, and had acted after “intelligence monitoring of Pakistani terrorist modules indicated that further attacks against India were impending”.
The strikes were followed by the standard belligerent posturing. “Justice is served,” the Indian military proclaimed. India will pay for “every last drop of blood” thundered Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Each side rushed to emphasise its civilian casualties.
India admitted that at least three of its aircraft were lost. Pakistan claimed not just five down aircraft, but three French-built Rafale fighters: India’s most advanced aircraft.
Despite India’s insistence that its retaliatory strikes were non-escalatory, the scale and number of sites targeted have taken many by surprise, raising fears that the tense neighbours could be hurtling towards a third war […]
Still, India’s claim to have carefully avoided military targets and civilian sites or infrastructure suggests it was seeking to re-establish deterrence without risking a full-blown war – an escalation neither country can afford.
In fact, if the two do go to all-out war, it will be the fourth Indo-Pakistani war. The two went at it almost immediately after the bloody Partition of India in 1947, then again in 1965 and 1971. Notably, all three took place before either side had acquired nuclear weapons. The only post-nuke conflict, 1999’s Kargil War, quickly fizzled out. Likely emboldened by their recent first nuclear tests, Pakistani troops crossed the Line of Control, to occupy the Indian-controlled Kargil region of disputed Kashmir, with its high ridges overlooking Indian territory. Within two months, India had driven them out and international pressure against an escalation persuaded Pakistan to withdraw (with bad grace: Pakistan refused the repatriation of thousands of its dead).
Will cool heads prevail again, this time? Most likely, yes.
Despite the violence, including cross-border shelling Wednesday, both sides sought to display a measured approach as the Trump administration urged them to avoid further escalation.
New Delhi said its strikes were based in part on intelligence about imminent attacks like the one which killed 26 people in Indian-administered Kashmir in April. India didn’t give a death toll from the overnight strikes but said it avoided collateral damage […]
In 2019, when India and Pakistan last confronted each other militarily after a deadly assault on Indian security forces in Kashmir, the two sides had a tit-for-tat military exchange before de-escalating.
Back then, though, both states were heavily amenable to US pressure. In the years since, while India has moved closer to the US via its ‘Quad’ semi-informal alliance, Pakistan has veered ever closer to being a client state of China, which may not be as bad as it sounds: with massive investments in infrastructure at stake in Pakistan, via Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, China is unlikely to be keen on a full-scale war.
Which may be famous last words, but let’s hope not.
