A major escalation of long-standing tensions that threatened the stability of deterrence between the two nuclear-armed enemies was the May 2025 India-Pakistan confrontation. Since their nuclear tests in 1998, there have been frequent clashes, although they have mostly remained within the disputed region of Kashmir.
In contrast, for the first time since the third Indo-Pakistani war in 1971, missiles and drones were fired at military installations in each other’s homeland during this battle.
What role does ideology play in Indo-Pak tensions?
Territories are not the only issue in the Kashmir dispute. It is fundamentally ideological and intertwined with the two governments’ opposing origin mythologies. However, the ideological nature of the struggle alone does not adequately account for the lack of a more sobering impact of nuclear weapons on politicians. The ideological struggle between the US and the USSR throughout the Cold War was equally entrenched. However, following the suspenseful 1961 Berlin Crisis and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, they managed to stabilize their battle.
After the Kargil War in 1999, India and Pakistan ought to have decided to put an end to their military brinksmanship and continue competing in less deadly ways, but tensions have persisted. Along the Line of Control, gunfire or artillery shell exchanges are frequent. Every few years, there are crises caused by what appears to be Pakistani backing for terrorism or militancy on Indian territory.
The fact that Pakistan is not a cohesive actor provides one answer. The democratic leadership does not have complete authority over its military. At least part of the bloodshed in Kashmir has been domestically produced, and the jihadist organizations are not entirely controlled by the military. Deniability is simple, and state control is challenging due to the ambiguity of Pakistan’s institutional relationships.
India and Pakistan did, in some respects, come to a solid agreement, albeit at the great expense of ongoing hostilities. Under nuclear deterrence, crisis management is akin to a game of “chicken.” The goal of each side’s escalation is to force the other two sides to either back down or go over a predetermined, unspoken threshold that might cause the dispute to spiral out of control.
A direct military confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union was that implicit threshold during the Cold War. The implicit barrier between India and Pakistan was to limit formal military reactions to the Kashmir region, which did not necessarily include terrorist assaults.
How has the conflict shifted beyond Kashmir boundaries?
However, for the past few years, this threshold has gradually been eroded. Indian reactions against Indian-administered Kashmir were restrained during Kargil. India attacked alleged terrorist bases in Pakistan-administered Kashmir with missiles in 2016. India fired them in 2019 from a location in Balakot, which is located within Pakistan. India targeted areas in Punjab, the Pakistani heartland, in 2025 as part of Operation Sindoor, while Pakistan struck back at many Indian targets.
Even though the Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in April 2025 was horrific, it wasn’t the greatest terrorist strike India has ever seen from jihadist organizations based in Pakistan. In terms of the number of fatalities, it was far outnumbered by the Mumbai attacks in November 2008. An obvious escalation occurred when India launched missile strikes straight into Pakistan’s Punjab region.
It has been extremely dangerous for India to go beyond the perceived threshold. For months, India has been working to take advantage of Trump’s tariffs on China. The stock market in India was expanding quickly. If a big battle breaks out, New Delhi stands to lose everything. India’s decision to halt the Indus Waters Treaty, which endangered Pakistan’s whole water supply,
already achieved this goal, even if a substantial reaction to the Pahalgam attack was necessary.
