The dangerous spectre of war is haunting the northern confines of the Indian subcontinent once again. Confrontation between India and Pakistan has remained intermittent for decades after the dissolution of the British Raj and the subsequent partition due to factors like unsettled territorial disputes, covert acts of state-sponsored terrorism, religious tensions, nuclear sabre-rattling, the geopolitical shadows of extra-regional powers, and incompatible nationalist claims. This region was identified by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski as a segment of a cauldron of instability referred to as the “Eurasian Balkans” because of its strategic volatility. Yet, this chapter is not merely the latest iteration of an interstate rivalry that has become traditional. In order to keep things in perspective, two states armed with nukes have engaged each other in a direct kinetic confrontation involving drone warfare and airstrikes, as well as cruise and ballistic missiles. Even more importantly, this episode takes place in a setting shaped by the emergence of an increasingly polycentric world order in which the spectrum of great power politics fluctuates between uneasy accommodation through Faustian deals and intense strategic competition.

Forensic Anatomy of the Conflict

As a retaliation for a deadly terrorist attack against Indian tourists in Kashmir committed by Islamic militants presumably backed by Pakistani intelligence services, India launched operation Sindoor. Tactically, this counterattack was calibrated to target jihadist headquarters and infrastructure, militant training camps, military sites and airbases on Pakistani soil. Rather than a full-scale Clausewitzian war, the scope of the Indian “special military operation” was restrained and measured. In fact, the ultimate strategic purpose of this offensive was to restore the credibility of Indian military deterrence, impose punitive costs on the Pakistani government for supporting violent non-state actors, redefine bilateral terms of engagement in case of hostilities, and to demonstrate Delhi’s strategic escalation dominance.

Yet, perhaps the top objective of Indian military statecraft was to highlight that — despite Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal — Islamabad’s clandestine support for Islamist militant proxies as vectors of aggression against India will not go unpunished from now on. In other words, the Indians intended to permanently rebalance the existing correlation of forces without the costs of relying on nuclear threats or a high-intensity land conflict that could turn into a grinding war of attrition. From a long-range perspective, this course of action is consistent with a behavioural trajectory of India embracing calculated risks in order to project the image of India as an aspiring great power willing to do what it takes in such pursuit. A recent example of said policy is the targeted killing of a high-profile Sikh separatist leader on Canadian soil a couple of years ago. Also, it most be borne in mind that Indian statecraft leveraged this opportunity to show resolve, leadership, and strength after the navigational setbacks and challenges derived from sudden overthrow of a Bangladeshi government close to India — as the result of popular unrest — last year.

In accordance with the rules of an operational landscape in which the distinction between conventional and unconventional warfare is somewhat unclear, the Indians also weaponised vectors of complex interdependence. Delhi mobilised assets to wage psychological warfare through the digital social media infosphere and suspended the delivery of fresh water supplies to Pakistan despite the existing legal provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty. Moreover, there are signs that India is willing to give a platform to Baloch separatist movements in order to fuel tribal agitation behind enemy lines and weaken Pakistan’s internal cohesiveness. Although Indian policymakers in charge of the war effort did not achieve a spectacular success, they made a point about both the seriousness of Delhi’s national security red lines and the versatile panoply of Indian defence assets. In hindsight, the short-lived Indian campaign seems to have borrowed strategic concepts from the Israeli playbook about the periodical necessity to degrade adversarial readiness. An additional factor that needs to be taken into account is Indian domestic politics, particularly considering the need of the Bharatiya Janata’s Party to reverse its diminishing electoral support. Prime Minister Narendra Modi — a political champion of Hindutva as an ideology which codifies the revival of Indian imperial traditions — intended to score political points with fellow Indian hardline nationalists by rallying around the flag. In this respect, Modi’s government portrayed Pakistan as a Schmittian existential enemy and displayed the assertiveness of India as a self-confident Sanatan civilisational state that reclaims its rightful place in history as part of its heritage. Tellingly, Operation Sindoor was named after a reddish cosmetic powder worn by married Indian women as an identitarian marker that evokes a devoted allegiance to the traditional Indian way of life.

Conventional wisdom and the intellectual worldview of classical realism would dictate that India’s numerical economic, demographic, military and territorial superiority would lead to a decisive overpowering victory. However, even though Pakistan did not completely vanquish Indian forces, it did not surrender either. Based on a Richelovian logic, Islamabad did not need to defeat India, an unwise course of action that may well invite nuclear incineration. Despite prevailing disparities, Pakistan reminded its southern neighbour that, per se, its resilient existence as an unapologetic force to be reckoned with is an effective buffer that prevents the rise of India as a regional hegemon. Equipped with Chinese-made early warning systems, missiles, electronic warfare hardware and Chengdu J-10 fighters, the Pakistani armed forces managed to showcase that Delhi’s airpower is not strong enough to claim supremacy over Kashmiri skies. In this theatre of engagement, the most resonant example of Pakistani military competence was the destruction of Indian warplanes (including imported French and Russian advanced combat aircraft). The forcefulness and precision of the Pakistani counterattack encouraged Delhi to accept a ceasefire negotiated thanks to the unexpected intervention of the Trump administration before the escalatory ladder of the conflict could go further. Pakistani political determination and material capabilities may also have convinced Indian naval forces to abort a crippling attack against the port of Karachi, a major cornerstone of the Pakistani economy.

All in all, the wartime mobilisation of Islamabad’s military muscles demonstrated that it can afford to assume a standoffish stance towards India. Aside from a qualified battlefield performance, another Pakistani achievement was a strong gravitational pull which attracted substantive foreign support. Aside from the reaffirmation of Chinese strategic patronage — manifested in deepening military and geoeconomic ties — the narrative image of Pakistan as a champion fighting on behalf of the wider Muslim world earned the diplomatic support of Islamic states such as Turkey and Azerbaijan. According to open sources, Ankara even provided both military supplies and fighters. Apparently, Turkish-made Songar drones were used by Pakistan in cross-border swarm attacks against Indian airbases, logistical nerve centres and weapons deposits.  In contrast, India was not overtly backed by other members of the QUAD, BRICS nations, neighbouring Asian states, or even heavyweights with close connections to Delhi, such as the U.S. and Russia. With these results, the higher military echelons of the Pakistani ‘deep state’ leveraged the crisis to consolidate and legitimise their internal political leadership. Thus, the popularity gathered thanks to skill of Pakistani generalship managed to compensate for the political fallout derived from the controversial and conspicuous ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Although both sides have claimed an ambiguous victory for themselves, a sober and nuanced situational assessment reveals that this temporary cessation of hostilities is far from being a conclusive outcome. Both impersonal forces and facts on the ground dictate the foreseeable recurrence of future crises. In an increasingly polycentric world order, both Indian and Pakistani hardliners have an incentive to reactivate hostilities in order to settle this enduring dispute. There are already signs which point in such a direction. For example, Congress-led Indian opposition forces recriminate that, despite Prime Minister Modi’s fierce nationalist rhetoric, his administration — unlike that of Indira Ghandi half a century ago — arguably lacked the courage and determination to fight until the capitulation of Pakistani troops. In turn, the Pakistani high command has no long-term strategic, political, or military incentive to stop funding, equipping, and training jihadist groups to outsource dirty work as an asymmetric equaliser against Delhi’s superiority in conventional firepower.

Consequential Repercussions

The northern part of the Hindustan was one of the major flashpoints in the original “Great Game” involving the British and the Czarist Empires. Today, the region is still worth fighting for because of its pivotal position at the crossroads of imperial pursuits, Herculean geographical obstacles, strategic chokepoints, trade networks and valuable deposits of natural resources. Hence, the ripple and spillover effects of the latest Indo-Pakistani skirmish are likely to provoke destabilising consequences beyond the actual battlefield in various ways. First, the intensification of direct and indirect geopolitical competition between India and China over access to strategic Central Asian raw materials is to be expected. For the Chinese, Pakistan can operate as an agent of denial that keeps in check Indian geoeconomic moves. Under these circumstances, states like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan will scramble to perform complicated balancing capable of accommodating competing Chinese, Indian, Russian, and Western interests. Second, the plausible reactivation of frozen conflicts, separatist movements, and sectarian rivalries can impact the completion of Chinese-led interconnectedness projects, especially those related to energy, trade, logistics and digital infrastructure. Third, the proliferation of militant jihadism — either spontaneous or directed — and its involvement in interstate confrontations can engulf Iran, Afghanistan, Xinjiang and much of post-Soviet Central Asia. Fourth, the conflict evidences the limited instrumental usefulness of blocs like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to manage underlying tensions, tame the forces of chaos and guarantee regional security because there are few common denominators aside from a shared interest in both de-dollarisation and the configuration of a multipolar balance of power. Fifth, together, such developments will hasten militarisation, security competition, shifting geopolitical alignments, proxy wars, and an incremental arms race in South Asia and the greater core of the Asian landmass itself. An additional shockwave unleashed by the recent Indo-Pakistani “Four-Day War” is an increased level of tension between the diasporas of both countries in multicultural Western states such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, an enmity which can instigate street violence. Hence, the echoes of the conflict can be exported to faraway corners of the Earth.

Implications for Great Power Politics

In order to avert the risks that come with overstretch and hubris, the United States is becoming less inclined to intervene in Eurasian crises in which vital US interests are not at stake. Unsurprisingly, the second Trump administration was outspoken in its reluctance to get involved. This time, Washington mediated as a facilitator of a short-term diplomatic solution likely because the US intelligence community noted the prospective dangers of an uncontrolled escalation. However, American diplomats may not be willing to act as middlemen when the following cycle of confrontation between Indians and Pakistanis breaks out in the coming decades. And their Chinese and Russian counterparts cannot easily jump in and play an equivalent role because the foreign policies of both Beijing and Moscow are not impartial enough. An absentee broker that can be trusted by both belligerents means — ominously — that next time the intensity of conflict may go further. Indeed, the consolidation of a multipolar world order means that tensions between Delhi and Islamabad will become increasingly harder to manage.

For all intents and purposes, China is the major winner of this conflict. As the incident in which Indian and Chinese troops attacked each other with sticks and stones in Ladakh back in 2020 shows, the rivalries between China and India persist. Their shared membership in multilateral frameworks such as the SCO and their triangular ties to the Russian Federation have defused tensions to a certain degree. Nevertheless, Indian and Chinese interests are incompatible due to competing plans surrounding Tibet, the availability of strategic resources in proximity to Sino-Indian border, influence in Southeast Asia, the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, and the status of Pakistan. From the viewpoint of Chinese statecraft, Pakistan has proved its usefulness as an expedient instrument of strategic distraction that prevents the development of an Indian sphere of influence beyond the immediate geopolitical perimeter of the subcontinent and also a key ingredient of a strategy to encircle India. In addition, clashes between India and Pakistan provided a realistic lab to test the effectiveness and reliability of Chinese defence technological outputs against French and Russian weapons. With this ‘business card,’ the Middle Kingdom improves its position and reputation as an arms exporter. However, through the results of its unwavering support for Islamabad, Beijing has indirectly fired a warning shot whose shockwaves are felt beyond the epicentre of this experimental clash by those with the intent of challenging Chinese national interests. Without fighting, Zhongnanhai expects that Taiwanese independentists, US forces stationed in Asia, hawkish Japanese nationalists, Indian hardliners, and even Russia’s strategic community are all paying close attention to what the Great Dragon has to say.

Moreover, the conflict poses awkward challenges for Russian foreign policy that require caution. Since the Soviet era, the Russians have regarded India as a specially privileged strategic partner. Today, Russia remains a major arms exporter to the Indian consumer market, as well as a source of energy resources. Based on an enduring diplomatic closeness, Moscow has also backed Indian positions on Kashmir. From the Indian perspective, Russia is also a trusted bidirectional backchannel to hold discreet unofficial talks with China, a collaboration that is helpful for détente and the preservation of strategic stability in Eurasia. Yet, there are limits. Just like Dheli has not openly backed Russia in the Ukraine war, Moscow is not interested in appropriating India’s geopolitical rivalries. On the other hand, despite exploratory overtures that did not achieve game-changing breakthroughs, Russia and Pakistan are natural enemies. Pakistani co-sponsorship of the Afghanistan Mujahideen as a joint venture with the CIA is remembered by the Kremlin with resentment to this day. The Soviet KGB was even suspected of masterminding the mysterious air crash in which Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq was killed. In the post-Cold War era, later waves of Pakistani-backed Wahhabist militias are a source of concern for Russian geopolitical interests in Central Asia and even for sociopolitical stability in Russian Republics in which the Islamic faith has a strong demographic presence. In contrast to Moscow’s inroads in other countries from the so-called “Global South,” the Kremlin has not been very successful in making friends in high places in Pakistan. Nonetheless, Moscow is not eager to antagonise Islamabad just to please India because of Pakistan’s position in China’s strategic orbit. Moreover, in a context in which Russia is trying to diversify its international economic exchanges in Asia, Pakistan remains as a potential buyer of Russian hydrocarbons. Finally, the role of Pakistan as a trigger of enmity between India and China — as long as things do not get too problematic — is convenient for Russian statecraft because it creates incentives so that both Beijing and Delhi rely on Moscow as an anchor of stability in the Asian balance of power. Russia certainly behaves as a revisionist great power in the post-Soviet space and Eastern Europe, but it has a vested interest in the preservation of the status quo in much of the Asia-Pacific without having to take sides.