As their nuclear forces expanded, the two nations established unwritten rules aimed at preventing a dangerous escalation. Neither New Delhi nor Islamabad wants a nuclear war, stopping each side from going too far when periodic skirmishes break out. For decades, their military confrontations have been confined to the border region, and in particular Kashmir, a flashpoint since 1947, when India was partitioned into two states at the end of British colonial rule. For years, both sides have primarily battled with ground forces, and never close to nuclear sites.
But those rules have been changing. The emergence of drone warfare and precision-guided munitions has caused red lines to fade. In 2019, India launched airstrikes against an alleged terrorist training camp in Balakot, Pakistan, marking the first time that one nuclear-armed nation dropped a bomb on another. The attack, which went further than any other conflict between the nations in decades, put the countries on newly dangerous footing. Last week’s clash was even more destabilizing.
After Pakistan-based terrorists allegedly shot and killed 26 civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir last month, the Indian military responded on May 7 with airstrikes on the border region, targeting what it called “terror camps.” It eventually extended its target to a site in Punjab, roughly 100 miles into Pakistan — the deepest strike in more than half a century. Pakistan retaliated with what Indian officials said were as many as 400 drone attacks on several cities, including the Indian-administered city of Jammu, near the heavily militarized border that separates the disputed region of Kashmir between the two countries.
Soon, Indian strikes hit a military air base in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, not far from Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which oversees the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Reports later surfaced that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan subsequently convened the National Command Authority, a group that decides the potential use of nuclear weapons.
It’s incidents like these when the potential for slipping into a nuclear escalation is the greatest. Close calls between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and other more recent nuclear crises, show that adversaries assume the worst and depend on open communication channels, monitoring capabilities and diplomatic measures. India’s airstrikes may have been inadvertent or intentional, but Pakistan won’t allow its nuclear capability to be threatened. India’s conventional forces are superior to Pakistan’s. Islamabad, therefore, sees its nuclear weapons as a means to even the battlefield in an all-out war. Pakistan, unlike India, has no declared restrictions on using its nuclear weapons first in a conflict to protect itself.
