The India-Pakistan spat: four scenarios

After two weeks of warnings, India unveiled its Operation Sindoor yesterday, featuring nine “precision strikes” across Kashmir’s line of control (LoC) into Pakistan-administered turf. It was the long-expected response to last month’s terrorist attack targeting Hindu tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir, leaving 28 dead from India, Nepal, and the UAE.

• A Pakistan-based jihadi group claimed responsibility but then, mysteriously, retracted the claim, alleging it was all a hack by Indian intelligence, while…

• India has long argued Pakistani intelligence backs these groups, so the retraction could’ve been due to Islamabad’s pressure, or even local Kashmiri outrage.

Anyway, neither side is blinking, with Pakistan vowing its own retaliation to the retaliation.

That’s what you call a classic escalation ladder, with domestic political pressure pushing both governments higher and higher. So, what happens next? Here are four scenarios —

1. Flexing over?

Delhi says it never entered Pakistan’s airspace, and limited its strikes to terrorist infrastructure. For its part, Islamabad has condemned the strikes as an act of war and has claimed hits back against Indian jets (at least three of which we know have “crashed”).

So maybe that’s enough for both sides to take a win and step away — Pakistan has even pledged not to take “irresponsible action” if India taps the brakes. Then the uneasy status quo ante could resume: diplomatic frost, border incidents, edgy statements, and so on.

But there’s still unquenched outrage on both sides of the border fuelled by history, politics, competition, and faith (last month’s attackers checked ID cards to target Hindus).

2. Tit-for-tat

If Pakistan’s hawks get their way, they might feel the need for a ‘quid pro quo plus’ — a punitive retaliation to re-establish deterrence abroad and legitimacy at home.

In this version, the tit-for-tat continues until each side feels it can declare victory. This stops short of full war, though is still enough to rattle markets, divert flights, take lives, and invite a growing chorus of calls from foreign capitals to just cool it.

But in the meantime, the risk of miscalculation lingers: that fighter jet turns out to be a passenger jet; that terrorist base turns out to be a holy site; that test fire gets mistaken for the real thing. All real-world examples, and all posing real-world risks of something bigger.

3. New playing field

These two foes might also reach for non-military ways to inflict pain, like India’s move to suspend the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (providing 90% the water for Pakistan’s crops).

India doesn’t yet have the infrastructure to divert these rivers — and that’s assuming it’d want the optics of starving 240 million neighbours — so it’s a rhetorical flex for now.

But it hints at the many non-military (but still escalatory) ways these nuclear powers might try to raise costs on the other. And ultimately, that escalation ladder leads to…

4. The nukes come out

But we leave this one last, and with reason. Aside from the obvious that it’s the worst case scenario, it’s also the least likely.

Still, India and Pakistan have been here before and in each instance, word has eventually leaked that planners considered nuclear scenarios. Yet also in each instance, a varying mix of US mediation, local restraint, and targeted concessions has helped de-escalate things.

But this isn’t 1999 or even 2019 — the US is spread thin, and so is India-Pakistan patience.