The recent India-Pakistan crisis drew global attention, but meaningful analysis requires applying an understanding of strategy and technology. This explainer, developed by Stimson’s Strategic Learning initiative, explores five key concepts — deterrence, the stability-instability paradox, escalation, standoff weapons, and crisis management —that can help students and emerging analysts interpret South Asia’s evolving security dynamics.
Five Key Concepts to Understand the India-Pakistan Crisis
The recent military crisis between India and Pakistan followed a familiar pattern to previous South Asian crises but reached new levels of intensity. Following a terror attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, India launched an operation targeting nine sites in Pakistan that New Delhi said were used by militant groups. Multiple rounds of increasingly escalatory missile and drone attacks followed, culminating in a Pakistani operation targeting several Indian military bases.
While the two sides have agreed to refrain from further military action, this crisis represents a concerning chapter for the India-Pakistan rivalry. New weapons, targets, and strategies have expanded the scope and intensity of possible hostilities between these two nuclear-armed states.
Media coverage of this crisis frequently used terms like deterrence, escalation, and crisis management—often without defining them. Clear understandings of these terms and how they do (or do not) apply can help analysts and practitioners better assess the incentives and impacts of the crisis.
Want to dive even deeper? The Strategic Learning initiative’s free online courses explore these topics in-depth and offer a certificate of completion.
Deterrence
In a press briefing after India’s initial operation, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri stated that Pakistan’s failure “to take action against the terrorist infrastructure on its territory” necessitated a military operation “to deter and to pre-empt.”
What does it mean for India to deter Pakistan, and what role can military action play?
Deterrence is the use of threats to pressure an actor not to take a certain action. If a state considers attacking an adversary but refrains out of concern over that adversary’s military power, it has been deterred.
| Deterrence typically takes two forms: deterrence by denial and deterrence by punishment. | |
| Deterrence by Denial | Deterrence by Punishment |
| Involves convincing an adversary that its attack would be unsuccessful because it would be physically blocked. | Based on the threat of imposing costs through retaliation. |
| Example: Deploying air defenses that will shoot down hostile aircraft. | Example: Convincing an adversary that an incursion would trigger a costly bombing campaign. |
Deterrence in the India-Pakistan crisis
Deterrence is usually unnoticed by the public, since it is about preventing aggression rather than taking visible action. Crises help reveal where and how deterrence is failing or succeeding, since visible military decisions are made in the public eye.
In South Asia, India generally seeks to deter terror attacks it attributes to militants based in Pakistan by threatening a conventional military response. Pakistan, in turn, seeks to deter that military action through both its conventional capabilities and the threat of potential nuclear use. While the details of the recent crisis remain contested, the fact that conflict took place between both sides suggests they experienced a deterrence failure.
This is why leaders and policymakers sometimes refer to military operations as being designed to “restore deterrence.” However, even this can be a misleading phrase, as Professor Debak Das of the University of Denver describes in a Strategic Learning video.
Over the coming weeks and months, analysts and policymakers will assess how successful both sides’ military operations were in restoring deterrence – a key question with the potential to shape regional security dynamics going forward.
To learn more about the basics of deterrence and its applications, enroll in Restoring Deterrence: Coercion and Crises in Southern Asia, a free online course from Stimson’s Strategic Learning Initiative.
Stability-Instability Paradox
The most powerful deterrent a state can possess is nuclear weapons. Soon after the development of nuclear weapons, scholars argued that these capabilities were so powerful that no two nuclear-armed states would dare to fight one another. In other words, they would be deterred from doing so. This concept is known as the theory of the nuclear revolution.
So, if India and Pakistan both possess nuclear weapons, how have they been able to fight one another?
The stability-instability paradox is one theory that offers a potential explanation for the recurrence of India-Pakistan crises. It proposes that while nuclear weapons may ensure stable deterrence at the strategic or nuclear level, instability and conflict are likely to occur at lower levels because both sides believe the fighting cannot escalate too far. In other words, because neither side is worried that a conflict would escalate dangerously, they may be more likely to fight limited wars.
Stability-Instability Paradox in the India-Pakistan crisis
Over the past 25 years, India has looked for ways to punish Pakistan militarily in response to terror attacks. Notable examples have included a large military mobilization in 2001, the development of the Cold Start military doctrine intended to quickly capture territory to extract concessions, “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control in Kashmir in 2016, and an airstrike in undisputed Pakistani territory in 2019.
In this latest crisis, India dramatically increased the scope of its military action against Pakistan in response to terrorism. This represented an expansion in India’s willingness to conduct conventional operations beneath the nuclear threshold, highlighting the continued relevance of the stability-instability paradox in South Asia. Both India and Pakistan believe crises will not escalate to the nuclear level, as the late co-founder of the Stimson Center, Michael Krepon, explains in a video from our archives.
To learn more about the theory of the nuclear revolution and stability-instability paradox, see Chapter 3 of Deterrence in Southern Asia, a free online course from Stimson’s Strategic Learning Initiative.
Escalation
Beyond the scope of India’s initial military operation, what set this crisis apart from past India-Pakistan crises was the unprecedented degree to which it escalated. Escalation refers to the intensification of conflict. It is often visualized as a ladder, where each rung represents a greater level of intensity than the one below it, though in reality it can be more complex.
While states can pursue deliberate escalation to “restore deterrence” and try to claim victory, there are also inadvertent and accidental forms of escalation that make the trajectory of crises harder to predict. For example, one state can take an action that antagonizes the adversary more than expected, that unintentionally hits a certain target, or that wasn’t even authorized by leaders. When any of those outcomes occur, the result can be further escalation that neither side originally intended.
Escalation in the India-Pakistan crisis
The crisis featured multiple rounds of retaliation, including strikes on major cities and military bases, and the use of capabilities never previously employed between two nuclear weapon states.
One moment that highlighted the unpredictability of escalation involved India’s targeting of Nur Khan air base near Pakistan’s Joint Staff Headquarters in Rawalpindi. U.S. officials reportedly worried that Pakistan could interpret this strike as a threat to their nuclear command infrastructure, prompting intensified U.S. efforts to facilitate de-escalation.
Officials in India and Pakistan often express confidence in their ability to control escalation in South Asian crises. Escalation control depends on multiple actors, however, each with different perceptions of the conflict, taking carefully calibrated actions in the fog of war. As a result, the nature of escalation is impossible to predict, as Center for Air Power Studies distinguished fellow Manpreet Sethi explains in this video from the Strategic Learning archives.
To learn more about escalation, see Chapter 4 of Deterrence in Southern Asia, a free online course from Stimson’s Strategic Learning Initiative.
Standoff Weapons
Another unique aspect of escalation dynamics in this crisis was the use of missiles and drones launched from bases at targets across the border. Standoff weapons, or weapons that can attack targets from beyond the battlefield, have seen increasing use globally, including in the Russia-Ukraine and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflicts.
Increases in accuracy have made weapons like cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles more usable and effective in combat. By allowing states to attack without sending troops or aircraft across the border, standoff weapons offer an option for conducting kinetic strikes without exposing aircraft to the heightened risks inside enemy airspace.
Standoff weapons in the India-Pakistan crisis
In recent years, India and Pakistan have both been investing significantly in developing and acquiring tactical missiles and drones. Both sides made wide use of these weapons, some of which had never before been employed in combat, in the recent crisis.
Standoff weapons reportedly used by India included French SCALP cruise missiles, Indo-Russian BrahMos cruise missiles, and Israeli Harop drones, and by Pakistan included Chinese PL-15 air-to-air missiles and Turkish YIHA drones. The introduction of all these new capabilities can make it difficult to reliably assess the balance of military power, as Stimson Center nonresident fellow Christopher Clary explains in a video recorded earlier in the crisis.
One potential concern around the use of these weapons is the risk of misinterpretation. Drones and particularly missiles, some of which can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads, take just minutes to reach their targets between India and Pakistan due to their proximity. If one state fears that an adversary is targeting its strategic capabilities or has potentially even launched a nuclear strike, rapid inadvertent escalation may follow.
To learn more about types and strategic roles of missiles, enroll in Missile Technologies in Southern Asia, a free online course from Stimson’s Strategic Learning Initiative.
Crisis Management
Though the crisis escalated intensely, both sides ultimately agreed to refrain from further fighting provided the other did the same. How and why are crises like this one able to be managed when both sides are intent on demonstrating their willingness and ability to restore deterrence through military action?
One tool that states can use to step back from the brink is confidence-building measures (CBMs). CBMs are a broad category of steps that states can take to help reduce tensions and promote good relations. The graphic below explores several CBMs that exist between India and Pakistan.
When two states are unable to resolve their tensions bilaterally, another measure that can help is third-party crisis management. Third parties can help to facilitate de-escalation by conveying messages between the two sides and using external leverage to help facilitate de-escalation. The United States has historically played a major role in helping to defuse crises between India and Pakistan, including the Kargil conflict, 2001-2002 standoff, the 2008 Mumbai attacks crisis, and, to a lesser extent, the 2019 Pulwama-Balakot crisis.
Crisis management in the India-Pakistan crisis
In this most recent crisis, both CBMs and third parties played a key role in crisis management. The hotline between directors general of military operations was reportedly used during the height of diplomatic tensions and again to negotiate the end of hostilities.
While the two sides ultimately agreed to a ceasefire, significant third-party intervention was reportedly required for them to reach that point. United States officials have spoken about their role in encouraging and mediating the negotiations, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaking with Pakistan’s Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir and other senior officials, while Vice President JD Vance called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Other states, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, also sought to play a helpful role, as Belfer Center associate Sitara Noor explains.
While third-party crisis management can be helpful in defusing ongoing conflicts, it can also encourage greater risk-taking in future crises if one or both sides assume an external actor will step in to limit escalation.
To learn more about crisis management, see Chapter 5 of Strategic South Asia, a free online course from Stimson’s Strategic Learning Initiative.
Conclusion
The world is far more complex than academic theories alone can capture. Yet, the analytical frameworks they provide offer valuable tools for thinking more clearly and asking the right questions when examining real-world events.
How might these strategic concepts evolve going forward? What can this and other crises in South Asia teach us about global competition under the nuclear umbrella? There is room—and need—for innovative thinking that updates existing understandings and anticipates future challenges.
While uncertainty still surrounds the full scope of recent developments between India and Pakistan, careful analysis of what happened, how it unfolded, and why it occurred remains essential. Such reflection not only helps make sense of the present but also prepares us to better anticipate, mitigate, and manage future crises.
Check out Strategic Learning’s full playlist of videos from experts analyzing the India-Pakistan crisis.
Also Read: Pahalgam Aftermath: An Unfolding India-Pakistan Crisis
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Image 1: Pakistan Army via Facebook
