India-Pakistan: The strategic paradox

The premier lesson from the limited military conflict in May 2025 between India and Pakistan is that limitation was possible since both sides were agreeable on keeping the conflict limited and the conflict witnessed a third party involvement, that of the US, in the background.

Even though the third party’s supposed role and its effect was rejected by India, the direct communication channel it prompted between the two sides operation’s branches led to cessation of hostilities.

The takeaway then for any future iteration(s) of limited military conflict between the two sides is that the two aspects must be present for limitation – the two sides tacitly agreeing on limitation and a third party’s non-intrusive facilitation.

Both may not be possible in future – with India rejecting a third party role and in either side’s ‘notion (concept) of victory’ either initially kept expansive or expanding under conflict conditions.

India’s ‘new normal’ reflects in the military domain as a continuing propensity for limited military conflict. This occasions the strategic paradox: only a conventional war that can turn nuclear can beget a grand strategic dividend but the risk cannot be run.

If and since other pathways are negated by the ‘new normal’ doctrine, it must logically follow that the doctrine has a limited strategic purpose: keeping adversarial relations in place indefinitely.

This begs the question: what is the political purpose of such use of force? The answer cannot be sought in the strategic domain, but the political; and in that, the domestic political.

On the Pakistan side, it is self-evident: adversarial relations help the army lord it over the country. On the Indian side it is equally obvious: helping dominant forces with their domestic agenda.

Deterrence Stability

The international order has witnessed outbreak of conflicts that have loosened the grip of international law against use of force. The likelihood of future iterations of limited use of force between the two sides is likely.

This has implications for deterrence stability between the two, since – as seen from past iterations of limited military conflict – not only has outbreak occurred thrice over but has been at a higher order of violence.

Since India wishes to bolster conventional deterrence of subconventional provocations by Pakistan, and Pakistan wishes to constrain Indian conventional advantages by manipulating perceptions of its nuclear threshold, there is a built-in potential escalatory dynamic.

Deterrence instability can arise at the conventional-nuclear interface if both get more ambitious in seeking more from respective level of deterrence manipulation (India at the conventional and Pakistan at the nuclear) than either ought to under strategic rationality.

This can occur if the initial notion of victory is incorrect or is revised upwards as the limited military conflict unfolds.

Limited Conventional War

The levels of conflict are taken here as: competition-limited military conflict-limited conventional war-conventional war-limited nuclear war-total war. There is scope to keep below ‘war’ with greater intensity, scope and duration of non-contact limited military conflict than witnessed in May ’25.

Escalation is when this ‘buffer’ of a wider May ’25-like limited military conflict is expanded with an extension of non-contact warfare to unacceptable levels, such as by targeting civilians and civil infrastructure; prompting the outbreak of contact warfare.

A second buffer emerges with a combination of non-contact warfare and contact warfare of lesser threatening quotient (eg. confined to the mountains theater) in a limited conventional war.

Escalation risk is higher in the drawing down of nuclear overhang even as India asserts conventional advantage; this is more likely when a limited conventional war expands to being a conventional war per se.

The threat is heightened when there is revision in the notion of victory to go with the higher level of war; when under the uncertainties that attend war - such as unsettling breakthroughs prompting over-reaction - there is a dynamic intrinsic to war taking hold; and in the political level playing to the domestic gallery.

However, there are escalation dampeners too such as third parties invigorated to intervening with greater vigour; adherence to the May ’25 lesson on wisdom of limitation; and that escalation is an exercise of ‘choice’ rather than a default outcome.

Entanglement

The May ‘25 targeting of Nur Khan, Sargodha and Kairana hills was potentially escalatory, in that it was suggestive of nuclear signaling on India’s side – that it is unimpressed by Pakistan’s nuclear card as part of its intent to demonstrate it is not deterred by ‘nuclear blackmail.’ Pakistan, for its part, plausibly denied calling up its NCA.

However, the contretemps energized US peace intervention.

Pakistan has since separated its rocket forces from its strategic forces. Counter-intuitively, Pakistan profits from entanglement, with entanglement seen as bolstering deterrence by building in inadvertence.

Pakistan’s preemptive dis-entangling effort is good for signaling non-nuclear intent; thereby indicating a readiness to meet India at its professed level of continuing with limited military conflict(s). The projected drawn-down nuclear awning incentivizes against Indian conventional targeting of nuclear complex. Pakistan is thus mindful of uncertainties at nuclear level, indicating it is sensitive to Indian indication that it will ignore nuclear signaling in its ‘new normal’ strategic doctrine.

In any case, in regional setting, threat of conventional-nuclear entanglement is exaggerated, as both states – not having the capability for LOW - can await impact to reveal the nature of the attack; thereby, do not have to be held to Cold War or superpower relevant nuclear theory and jargon.

Even so, references to entanglement are in Pakistan’s deterrence brief since projecting nuclear dangers helps secure Pakistan’s nuclear capability from Indian conventional degradation; an effort the Indian side will profess to deny, though in practice should rationally take the threat onboard.

New Technologies and Non-linear Escalation

Effects of new technology heighten the scope and intensity of a conflict, allowing for both escalatory and non-escalatory possibilities – since as mentioned escalation though an intrinsic tendency of conflict in general is equally a matter of ‘choice’. Consequently, technological upgrade can well function to up-the-ante as much as allow limiting conflict by reassuring a side.

In a multi-domain conflict, disadvantage that could have resulted in upping of the ante can be offset by technology-facilitated advantages in another domain; thereby, enabling limitation. For instance, both sides offset their respective setbacks in May ’25 with information operations in the cognitive domain targeting respective national audiences that each prevailed, thereby mitigating impact of their respective setbacks (India on the first night and Pakistan on the last night of their four-day limited military conflict).

In brief, tech upgrades in air defence will empower both to stay the distance, while targeting of air defences will be escalatory if a disarming effort; offensive air munitions may prove escalatory in damage inflicted, as was the case with use by both sides in May ’25; cruise missiles and UAS use may lead to escalatory infrastructure busting, such as by Pakistan of dams on Kashmir rivers seen as violative of IWT; and non-kinetic warfare will assume significance if AI-powered cyber attacks target civilian infrastructure.

Non-linear escalation pathways will also kick-in such as grey zone, intelligence operations and proxy war expanding, under uncontrolled conditions with autonomous actors use the opportunity to their own purposes. Overall, the cumulative impact could be an in-conflict redefinition of notion of victory.

The dual-faced nature of cognition warfare that can also target domestic space enables national mood manipulation, ruling-in de-escalation by taming street power. Pakistan in particular could manipulate third party intervention propensities with information operations directed without.

Summary

Limited military conflict is likely to continue as a policy choice for both sides, with May ‘25 lessons on limitation well-learnt. Info war targeting respective domestic audience can fill in for any deficits, as was found efficacious by both sides in May ’25.

This enablement of use of force will disincentivize strategic engagement for resolving problems as it provides both with a substitute in use of force for negotiated settlement. This suits the vested interests of both sides’ politically dominant lobbies.

However, limited military conflict is liable to escalate in a future iteration(s), with escalatory risks stemming from uncertainties in the dynamics of conflict and from contact warfare. Ambitious aims may derail initial notion of victory and third party efficacy may be limited, given India evincing disinterest.

Even so, the critical nuclear-conventional interface will unlikely to be breached since brown sahibs are equally capable of strategic good sense. It can however be threatened if limited conventional war is allowed to proceed to becoming a full-blown conventional war.

Strategic good sense is in not using a risky pathway to get to a mutually sought dividend. If such a military risk is run then only a grand strategic dividend must be an outcome. Such a dividend is belied by continuing of limited military conflicts, but may be possible in case of war itself.

Therefore, resolving the resulting paradox – that war alone can deliver grand strategic dividend but cannot be chanced - is the principal challenge for the strategic communities of both sides; one compounded by reluctance of respective power elites to permit an answer.