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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russia’s Vladimir Putin in 2022 that “today’s era is not the era for war”. These are words that Modi and his counterpart in Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, should keep in mind. India’s air strikes on “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan in response to last month’s deadly shooting of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir threaten to trigger an alarming escalatory spiral between two nuclear-armed powers. This is a dangerous and complex crisis, in which both sides must exercise restraint. International partners, above all Donald Trump’s US, urgently need to step up diplomatic efforts to avoid a full-blown conflict.
Modi’s government clearly felt a military response was unavoidable to the massacre of 26 people at Pahalgam, in which Indian authorities accuse Pakistan-based militants of being involved. India’s foreign secretary insisted New Delhi had a “compulsion both to deter and pre-empt” further terrorist attacks. Public anger was running high. But it is regrettable that India has not made public evidence it says it has of Pakistani involvement in the shooting — which Islamabad denies — nor permitted an independent probe.
India said its “precision” strikes on nine “terrorist camps” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir aimed to avoid collateral damage. Pakistan’s military said 26 Pakistanis had been killed, with 46 injured. By striking more targets and more deeply into Pakistan’s Punjab province, Indian forces have gone further than the last time tensions in contested Kashmir flared in 2019; this is now the most extensive military exchange between the two sides in decades. Yet India’s latest language hints at a desire to contain the situation.
As of Wednesday, the world was awaiting Pakistan’s response. Its forces were authorised to take measures “at a time, place, and manner of its choosing”. If its claims to have shot down five Indian military jets and a combat drone are true, though, Islamabad has inflicted more damage on its neighbour than in 2019. It could credibly argue that this is adequate retaliation, and take a step back. It may feel pressure to make a more high-profile counterattack. But by choosing limited targets carefully designed to avoid civilian casualties, it might avert an escalatory cycle.
Nuclear arsenals on both sides mean escalation has a devastating end point. Yet this knowledge could have its own de-escalatory dynamic. Both countries are well aware of where their interests lie. For India, any conflict would be a severe setback on its path to being one of the world’s leading economic powerhouses. For Pakistan, after years of turmoil, it would derail an incipient recovery; its finance minister was in London on Wednesday to pitch to investors.
These are messages the international community could usefully emphasise. For the US, the only country with influence on both sides, President Trump has called India’s strikes “a shame” and said he hoped the fighting “ends very quickly”. But the self-styled peacemaker should be pushing his administration to be much more heavily engaged in shuttle diplomacy, as it was in his first term. The India-Pakistan tensions are as thorny as Russia’s war with Ukraine and at least as dangerous to the global order. France, another big economic partner and increasingly important military supplier to India, has leverage, too, as does the UK, which has just agreed a new trade deal. China, meanwhile, which borders Kashmir and is a big investor in Pakistan, should urge moderation on Islamabad.
Trump’s second-term trashing of the multilateral system means the auguries for diplomatic co-operation are not good. The India-Pakistan stand-off is an early test of whether the world’s big powers can still manage, singly or in concert, to head off a potential calamity.