Before the announcement of a “ceasefire” by U.S. President Donald Trump on May 10, the likelihood of India and Pakistan entering extended kinetic military activity, and potentially a conventional full-scale war, appeared more real than it has been at any time in recent years. The prelude to the ceasefire saw a marked military escalation that triggered a troubling erosion in the deterrence architecture that has governed India-Pakistan military behavior for decades, especially since their 1998 nuclear tests. However, with fighting now suspended, at least for the time being, the dust has settled on a notable moment of calibrated brinkmanship by both nations.
Following India’s “precision” strikes on the night of May 6-7 under Operation Sindoor – which targeted at least nine sites that India claimed to be militant logistical hubs in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir – Pakistan’s military establishment, widely regarded as the de facto authority on national security and regional policy, came under institutional and public pressure to respond. The retaliation came on May 10 under Operation Bunyan-un-Marsoos, with Islamabad claiming targeted strikes on several Indian military installations, some of which were later acknowledged by New Delhi.
In the ensuing tit-for-tat escalation, India launched a second wave of strikes, initially claiming to have hit three Pakistani Air Force (PAF) bases: Nur Khan (Chaklala) near Rawalpindi, Murid (Chakwal), and Rafiqui (Shorkot, in Jhang district). Subsequently, the Indian government raised its claims of targeted PAF sites to eight, in addition to other military assets.
Now that the hostilities have stopped and the mutual “understanding” to halt the violence appears to be holding, it has raised some pertinent questions. One such question concerns the evolving military doctrines of both India and Pakistan and what this recent conflagration means for the two sides. While a broader conflict was averted, the May 6-10 engagements suggest an intensifying contest not just on the battlefield, but in the realm of military signaling and strategic posturing between these nuclear-armed countries. While New Delhi’s actions reflect an apparent shift toward establishing and enforcing an “escalation dominance” framework as a normative to dictate the tempo and terms of engagement, Islamabad’s response appeared seemingly calibrated to reassert the pre-crisis status quo.
As events unfolded during the standoff, India seemed intent on shaping the operational environment more assertively while simultaneously limiting Pakistan’s scope for narrative or strategic equivalence. This included efforts to have Pakistan’s traditional Gulf allies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pressure Islamabad against responding miltiarily to India’s May 6-7 strikes. It also explains India’s restraint in acknowledging certain Pakistani claims about May 6-7 aerial engagements between their air forces, including reported aircraft losses incurred by the Indian Air Force (IAF), like a Rafale fighter. This suggests a deliberate effort to manage both the kinetic and narrative dimensions of the conflict.
While the guns may have fallen silent for now, the episode highlights a fluctuating calculus in South Asia – one in which old deterrence norms look no longer sufficient, thereby requiring new mechanisms to deal with future incidents.
The Evolution of Deterrence in the India-Pakistan Dyad
Since their 1998 nuclear tests, India and Pakistan have been bound by a loose yet somewhat recognizable deterrence framework to govern their military engagements. This nuclear parity introduced credible constraints on full-scale conventional war scenarios, which dictated that both sides recalibrate their military doctrines under the nuclear threshold. Had it not been for such parity, it would have been difficult for a global power like the United States, which then was Pakistan’s major ally, to push the two sides to end the 1999 Kargil War before it became a full-blown war beyond the Himalayan mountains of Kashmir.
Similarly, the military standoff in 2001–02, following the December 2001 attack on India’s Parliament and the Pulwama-Balakot episode of 2019 – incidentally both attributed to the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) militant group, the same group whose headquarters New Delhi claimed to have destroyed during May 6-7 strikes in Bahawalpur – demonstrated that both countries had adopted a posture of strategic restraint, albeit one punctuated by short, sharp confrontations.
India, in particular, traditionally avoided crossing certain thresholds, partly due to concerns about escalation control. It relied on a mixture of diplomatic offensive along with local theater-level military actions, such as after the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 and 2014-2015 skirmishes along the Line of Control (LoC), the 1949 ceasefire line which has become a de facto border between the two countries in Kashmir. Pakistan, meanwhile, employed the rhetoric of nuclear retaliation, combined with a policy of deniable subconventional warfare – that is, proxy warfare – by supporting many Kashmir-centric militant groups, to maintain a degree of strategic leverage, especially in Kashmir.
This strategic dynamic created a fragile but enduring equilibrium, one in which hostilities remained calibrated, predictable, and yet within the escalation threshold. While ceasefire violations along the LoC, and proxy actions by Pakistan-origin militants have been recurrent, the risk of uncontrolled escalation was somewhat mitigated by the mutual understanding of red lines and a shared aversion to overt war.
Is Operation Sindoor a Tactical Inflection Point?
The events of May 6-7 marked a qualitative shift from the prevailing strategic status quo. After 26 tourists were killed in a terrorist attack on April 22 in the Pahalgam area of Jammu and Kashmir, The Resistance Front, widely seen as a local proxy for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), took responsibility initially. In retaliation, India launched Operation Sindoor and conducted airstrikes.
The attacks targeted what the Indian government labeled as important logistical assets of various militant groups and launchfpads within mainland Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, thereby marking a sharp increase in scale and intent. New Delhi asserts that it has have killed some prominent “terrorists” and destroyed the terror infrastructure at Bahawalpur, Sialkot, Muridke, Muzaffarabad, Kotli, and Bhimber, which, it claimed, were being operated by Kashmir-focused groups such as LeT, JeM, and Hizbul Mujahideen.
What set this episode apart was the subsequent deployment of drone swarms by both sides to overwhelm each other’s air defense systems. India employed hundreds of Israeli-manufactured Harper drones to penetrate Pakistani airspace before dozens of these loitering munitions were shot down over several cities, including Rawalpindi, the twin city of Islamabad that is home to the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army. From a tactical point of view, this might be interpreted as a means of communicating a message without necessarily inviting the type of escalation a traditional airstrike would. Moreover, it showcased a new capability to undermine Pakistani deterrence through non-traditional vectors of engagement.
Notwithstanding the fact that Pakistan responded with its own drone swarm attacks, India’s initiative of trying to maintain its control over the escalation ladder aimed at redefining the “threshold” of response by opting for what could be called a form of retaliation that is demonstrative, precise, and yet unpredictable compared to previous norms. Such a blurring of conventional and subconventional responses could well redefine future crisis response templates in South Asia.
Escalation Dominance: India’s New Strategic Grammar
India’s May 7-10 actions point toward a shift in doctrinal thinking from deterrence by denial to deterrence by punishment. It appears increasingly willing to exploit what it sees as a space below the nuclear threshold, within which it can operate with plausible deniability and calculated force. This is best captured by the idea of “escalation dominance” in deterrence tactics, wherein one side asserts control over the pace, intensity, and narrative of the conflict, according to the definition of the Global Security Review.
By executing its strike, managing domestic information flow, and refusing to confirm losses while putting the onus of escalation on Pakistan, India attempted to project its dominance across both physical and perceptual theaters. New Delhi’s continued efforts aimed at denying Islamabad a narrative victory by avoiding acknowledgement of its own casualties or damage to its IAF fighter jets during the May 6-7 action, particularly the French-made Rafale, which was touted by many at its induction as a “game changer” in India’s regional air dominance.
Such controlled narrative-building also demonstrated how information warfare became an extension of its kinetic strategy. The post-strike opacity maintained by the Indian government suggested confidence in managing domestic opinion while simultaneously discrediting Pakistan’s attempts to claim any form of enforcing status quo ante.
Moreover, while the change in redefining India’s policy outlook has been in the works for the last decade – as evidenced by the 2016 cross-LoC “surgical strikes” following the Uri attack and 2019 post-Pulwama strikes on Balakot – these recent events show the willingness of Indian leadership to cement cross-border strikes as a first response to any form of extremism it believes originates from Pakistani soil. The Indian leadership has made it clear that any future incident involving nonstate actors operating from Pakistani soil will be treated as an act of war and provoke a firm and immediate response.
Pakistan’s Strategic Bind
India’s redefined doctrinal approach pushed Islamabad into a difficult position. Pakistan’s military elite, which is accustomed to shaping national security policy and asserting parity with India, came under both institutional and popular pressure to “respond.” The perceived erosion of its deterrence credibility created a reputational challenge.
These pressures eventually saw Pakistan initiate its own response by first launching drone swarm attacks during May 8-10, followed by Operation Bunyan-un-Marsoos (Wall of Lead), targeting multiple military installations in Jammu and Kashmir, and along India’s western sector. India has acknowledged limited damages at its airbases at Udhampur, Pathankot, Bathinda, Bhuj, and Adampur. This would have been seen as an attempt to reassert military parity; however, India denied such an advantage by targeting Pakistani military installations at Rafiki, Murid, Chaklala, Rahim Yar Khan, Sukkur, and Juniya.
Pakistan appeared to be seeking demonstrative yet limited military actions that served more as messaging than as escalation. However, given how things gradually spiraled downhill, South Asia is now at a greater risk. Even a miscalculated symbolic move from either of the two countries could trigger unintended consequences in an increasingly fluid tactical environment.
Extra-Regional Actors and the Search for Off-Ramps
In the past, extra-regional actors such as the United States and the Gulf monarchies have been instrumental in de-escalating India-Pakistan tensions. Their intervention tended to make both sides step back from imminent confrontations with minimal harm to their reputation and room to spin their own narratives of control. For example, in the 1999 Kargil War, U.S. President Bill Clinton was instrumental in persuading the Pakistan Army, led by General Pervez Musharraf, to stop fighting and retreat from the Himalayan hills. But in this recent face-off, while Saudis, Emiratis, and Americans did make an effort to assist in toning down the hostility, the effect seemed restricted in the early stages.
In addition, India’s increasing strategic capital on account of its expanding economic muscle and growing military power, along with its U.S.-encouraged role as a key counterweight to China in the broader Sino-American dynamic, gives it more leverage in avoiding outside mediation. At the same time, Pakistan’s credibility as a victim of unprovoked aggression has been undermined in international perception, much of which still harbors suspicions about its counterterrorism credentials based on its track record of using proxy nonstate actors as an integral part of its regional policy.
Thus, the traditional diplomatic “cooling mechanisms” are increasingly returning ineffective. This raises the stakes of each escalation cycle, especially when neither party is under meaningful external pressure to de-escalate quickly.
Conclusion: An Escalatory Cycle Without Clear Exit Routes
The current phase in India-Pakistan relations reflects a breakdown of the old deterrence logic. Both countries are learning to adapt to an increasingly opaque, asymmetric, and technologically advanced battlefield. While India’s efforts to enforce its escalation dominance may appear bold, it is equally a risky attempt at managing the pace and narrative of war. At the same time, Pakistan’s response, while reactive and symbolic, is also fraught with potential for miscalculation.
It remains debatable whether India successfully imposed its new strategic doctrine or Pakistan managed to reassert strategic equivalence and restore the status quo ante. What is certain is that the escalation threshold has been significantly lowered. Indian leadership has made it clear that any future incident involving nonstate actors operating from Pakistani soil will provoke a firm and immediate response.
As such, under this changing strategic environment, the weakness of de-escalation mechanisms or channels of crisis communications adds a layer of volatility to an already inflammable situation. In the absence of any effective diplomatic engagements or regional conflict resolution mechanisms, normalizing these cycles of episodic hostilities that consistently lower the escalation threshold underpinning military dynamics between New Delhi and Islamabad has adverse implications not just for these two countries but also for the region and beyond.
Therefore, in order to avert the potential of further drifting into an untenable cycle of escalation, India and Pakistan, and the global community, would need to rework these assumptions underpinning strategic (dis)equilibrium in the region. As this standoff clearly illustrates, the window for crisis management is increasingly shrinking with each incident, and the price of failure may prove disastrous.