India-Pakistan Relations
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Firebreak or Fuse? Pakistan’s Rocket Force and the Deterrence Dilemma in South Asia
Hot on the heels of its May 2025 conflict with India, in which Pakistan used the guided Fatah rocket series against military targets, Islamabad’s announcement of the formation of the Army Rocket Force Command (ARFC) on the eve of its…
SAV Q&A with Avinash Paliwal: India’s Realpolitik vis-à-vis the Taliban and its Regional Implications
Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a two-part conversation with Avinash Paliwal. Read the second part here. In a high-profile sign of the reversal of a decades-old policy, India for the first time hosted a Taliban official on its…
How India Views the Saudi-Pak Defense Pact: Historical Drivers and Future Concerns
The recently announced Saudi-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA) came as a surprise to many observers. In India, this development was initially seen through a South Asia lens amidst talk of an embryonic “Islamic NATO,” or a collective military alliance…
Dual-Use Missiles in South Asia and Implications for India-Pakistan Crisis Stability
In the contemporary nuclear age, dual-capable delivery systems that can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads are widely assumed to be highly destabilizing in crises. In South Asia, dual-use systems can generate significant anxiety—not just for India and Pakistan, but…
Testing Deterrence: South Asia’s Strategic Stability After May 2025
The Pakistan-India crisis of May 2025 has once again underscored the fragility of South Asia’s deterrence architecture. What began as a localized confrontation escalated rapidly, demonstrating how misperceptions, doctrinal ambiguities, and conventional imbalances can endanger regional peace. In the aftermath…
India-Pakistan Cyber Skirmishes and the Challenge of Attribution
The recent India-Pakistan crisis in May illustrated how cyber and artificial intelligence are being integrated into military combat in the subcontinent, a significant development for South Asia’s fragile strategic stability.