Ever since India and Pakistan held nuclear tests in 1998, relations have been guided by an overarching assumption: that India would not retaliate directly on Pakistani territory for an act of terrorism by Pakistan-based militants out of fear of triggering a war that might go nuclear.
That assumption no longer holds.
A suicide car bombing claimed by Pakistan-based militants killed 40 Indian paramilitary police in Indian Kashmir on February 14, and India retaliated this week with airstrikes on a militant training camp deep within Pakistan. It was the first use of air power in history by one nuclear-armed power against another.
The airstrikes targeted what India said was a training camp of the Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group — the same group that claimed the attack on the Indian security forces. Pakistan responded by attacking Indian fighter jets in Kashmir, downing at least one plane and capturing the pilot.
While only a fool would dare predict what is likely to happen next, it is safe to say that all the old rules and assumptions which guided relations between India and Pakistan since they became declared nuclear-armed powers in 1998 are being rewritten. These are uncharted waters.
India and Pakistan are having to rethink their assumptions about each other at a time when they also have to consider fast-moving changes in the outside world.
That does not mean that everyone needs to dig nuclear fallout shelters. India and Pakistan have faced crises before in their post-nuclear history and come back from the brink. Moreover, the highly charged emotional public rhetoric can often be misinterpreted by Westerners and sometimes — but not infallibly so — disguises more sober reflection behind the scenes.
Pakistan also has a tendency to boast loudly about its nuclear weapons — a message that is mainly designed to deter further military action by India, the larger power in terms of conventional forces — which can add to alarmism in the outside world.
That said, this crisis is a step-change on those that preceded it. The Indian airstrikes alone would justify its description as a watershed. On top of that, it is happening at a time when Western countries are preoccupied with their own problems. It is thus a crisis that combines two new and unpredictable elements: a willingness by India and Pakistan to raise the stakes in ways they have not done before and an unwillingness or inability by Western countries to intervene to stop them.
Changed dynamics
India and Pakistan had already fought three full-scale wars when they declared themselves nuclear powers. Two of these wars were over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which both countries control in part and claim in full.
India has won a huge pool of international sympathy in the past for its strategic restraint. It is now drawing on that credit in expecting — and largely getting — some tolerance for its reprisal airstrikes in Pakistan.
The acquisition of nuclear weapons changed the dynamics in two important ways. First, it appeared to make outright war impossible. Second, it cemented a pre-existing tendency in Pakistan to use proxy forces against a more powerful India. Secure in the knowledge that its nuclear weapons protected it from Indian retaliation on Pakistani soil, Pakistan was able to maintain a low-level, undeclared war against what it sees as Indian hegemony in South Asia, one most powerfully symbolized in Pakistani eyes by Indian control of Muslim-majority Kashmir.
The India-Pakistan crises that followed the nuclear tests fell into a predictable pattern, though it did not seem that way at the time. Pakistan would test how far it could use the protection of its nuclear umbrella to push back against India. In turn, India would threaten reprisals while refraining from attacking Pakistan directly.
The outside world, alarmed by the prospect of nuclear war, would intervene to force Pakistan to back down, pulling both countries back from the brink of war while leaving their relationship fundamentally unchanged.
For example, in 1999 Pakistan sent troops to occupy remote mountain positions on the Indian side of the Line of Control which divides Kashmir. In what became known as the Kargil War, India sent its own soldiers to drive them out but refrained from sending troops or aircraft across the Line of Control. Pakistan was forced to pull back its troops after coming under intense international pressure.
In 2001-2002, India mobilized its army after an attack on the Indian parliament by militant groups based in Pakistan. Again, India refrained from crossing into Pakistan. The United States led international pressure on Pakistan to rein in its jihadi proxies, averting a war. But the anti-India Islamist militant groups flourishing in Pakistan were curbed rather than eliminated.
After a few years of relative peace, they struck again when Pakistani gunmen from the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group attacked Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people. Under then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, India decided against retaliating, again relying on international diplomatic pressure to convince Pakistan to disarm its Islamist militant groups.
A fragile peace
Somewhat unexpectedly, the pattern established through these crises created a precarious equilibrium. India’s policy of what became known as “strategic restraint” worked to its advantage. It allowed it to focus on growing its economy while gaining clout on the world stage. Pakistan as a country suffered. But the ongoing low-level conflict with India allowed Pakistan’s military to maintain its position as the pre-eminent power domestically.
It is that equilibrium which has now disappeared. India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has clearly decided that the gains of strategic restraint are no longer worth the pain of tolerating sporadic attacks by Pakistan-based militant groups. Pakistan in turn can no longer assume its nuclear weapons protect it from Indian retaliation. In that sense, both countries are rewriting their own rules and assumptions at the same time.
All this is happening while Western countries are looking inward. Under President Donald Trump, the United States has lost some of the credibility and capacity that allowed it to lead diplomatic efforts to end previous India-Pakistan crises.
Pakistani protesters shout slogans in front of a burning effigy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a protest in Quetta on February 27, 2019 | Banaras Khan/AFP via Getty Images
In the past, Washington has also been able to elicit support from China, which despite being Pakistan’s main ally and a traditional rival with India, has frowned on any adventurism that might destabilize the region. But trade rows between the United States and China mean their relations are now far more frayed than during previous crises.
Britain, which previously played a key role in shuttle diplomacy as a junior partner to the United States, is consumed by Brexit.
In other words, India and Pakistan are having to rethink their assumptions about each other at a time when they also have to consider fast-moving changes in the outside world. On top of that, the U.S. is seeking Pakistani support for a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, potentially limiting its willingness to put pressure on Islamabad.
India has won a huge pool of international sympathy in the past for its strategic restraint. It is now drawing on that credit in expecting — and largely getting — some tolerance for its reprisal airstrikes in Pakistan. But that sympathy will not last for too long if India is seen to be becoming too belligerent.
Within these equations are other moving parts. Some of these are military. In recent years, Pakistan has been developing battlefield nuclear missiles intended for use against any armored Indian advance. While these are intended for use in remote parts of the Pakistani desert, their very development lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in a way that was not the case before.
Other moving parts are political or economic.
U.S. President Donald Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting in the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in Buenos Aires, on November 30, 2018 | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Indian Prime Minister Modi, who has boasted of taking a tough line with Pakistan, faces an election within months. Unrest in Indian Kashmir is also rising as angry youth scarred by years of conflict protest against crackdowns by Indian security forces. That makes it easier to exploit by Pakistan-based militant groups, all too ready to turn Kashmir into a bloodbath to discredit India and press Pakistan’s claim on it.
Pakistan, however, is also vulnerable at a time when the civilian government under Prime Minister Imran Khan is struggling to stabilize the economy and reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
It is impossible to predict how all these moving parts will end up. All that can be said is that Pakistan and India have entered a new and dangerous era in their relations at a time of massive global change.
Myra MacDonald is a South Asian specialist, journalist and author of two books on India and Pakistan. Her most recent book, “Defeat is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War” (2016, C. Hurst and Co.) examines how relations changed between India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests in 1998.