India and Pakistan are marching towards an uncontrolled escalation. Their recent ‘Four-Day War’ saw several dangerous precedents being set and red lines being crossed. For the first time ever, two nuclear powers directly bombarded each other with missiles which, from India, included the nuclear-capable (conventionally armed in this instance) Brahmos.

For the first time since the Korean War (1950-53), where the United States Airforce and the Soviets flying MiG-15s under Chinese and North Korean markings clashed, a major air battle was fought between the air forces of two nuclear powers.

There are only two instances of major direct clashes on the ground between nuclear powers — the Sino-Soviet border clashes of 1969 and the India-Pakistan Kargil conflict of 1999.

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which came close to triggering an actual war between the United States and the Soviet Union, ended in compromise, with missile withdrawals on both sides and a realisation in Washington DC and Moscow that direct confrontations should remain off the table.

The latest escalation in the Subcontinent reveals how quickly calculated brinkmanship can become uncontrollable fury, as red lines vanish and deterrence crumbles…

The Americans and Soviets employed subversion, terrorism, proxy wars, arms build-ups, military posturing and military interventions against non-nuclear powers, but they would never attack each other directly. And it is not surprising that most of what the world understands about nuclear deterrence comes from the US-Soviet Cold War.

THE NEW NUCLEAR PLAYBOOK

India-Pakistan, however, have not just left the deterrence building. They’ve moved to a new zip code and are rewriting the rules of engagement between nuclear powers in profoundly unsettling ways.

In this equation, India has been doing most of the pushing, but there are signs that the mood in Pakistan is increasingly inclined to try and aggressively upend Indian calculations.

As a student of history who has spent two decades offering courses on the history of Europe, the history of the 20th Century and Cold War history, I find that the escalatory momentum of India and the retaliatory momentum of Pakistan are leading inescapably to a major regional war.

Let us imagine a scenario. A year from now, there is a major attack on Indian security forces and/or civilians by an armed group. India, per its declared policy of equating such violence with an act of war, blames Pakistan. Pakistan asks for proof and an independent investigation, knowing that these demands will be brushed aside by India. India’s TV studio and social media warriors start baying for Pakistani blood.

Learning lessons from 2025, India decides to strike Pakistan using missiles, including the nuclear-capable Brahmos. Compelled by its own rhetoric, New Delhi goes for an even wider selection of targets, lashing out not just at Pakistani civilians, but also targeting dozens of Pakistani military installations. Having carried out these strikes, India declares it is presently satisfied and won’t escalate any further, if Pakistan accepts the beating it has received and opts not to return fire.

PAKISTAN’S RETALIATION CALCULUS

Even a cursory knowledge of Pakistani psychology and history would lead one to understand that Pakistan is a) not a casualty sensitive country, b) is going to hit back.

Armed with the latest Chinese jets, including stealth fighters, and aided by the non-kinetic resources of its great ally, Pakistan unleashes missile strikes on dozens of military targets in India, using its own range of nuclear-capable (though conventionally armed) cruise missiles. Cyber-attacks cripple the Indian electricity grid and information ecosystem as Pakistani drones take photos with the Taj Mahal. The Indian Airforce suffers humiliating losses on the defence, while the Pakistanis manage to attack and return unscathed.

This time, Pakistan’s quid-pro-quo-plus plunges the Indian government into a dilemma. If they seek a ceasefire, they will appear weak, given the undeniable extent of the damage done by Pakistan. The phones in Islamabad and New Delhi are, at this point, ringing off the hook, as the Saudis, Russians, Americans and other nations attempt to talk India and Pakistan off the ledge.

But there is a problem.

As Farhan Siddiqi noted recently, India-Pakistan de-escalation rests on both sides being able to claim victory for their domestic audiences. This resolve paradox is easier for Pakistan to manage because, as the smaller of the two, its people understand there’s no winning an all-out war with India — an honourable draw feels like a victory when you are the size of the enemy’s largest province (Uttar Pradesh).

INDIA’S CREDIBILITY TRAP

For New Delhi, fond of projecting itself as a great power and regional hegemon and indulged in its hubris by a generation of intoxicatingly uncritical Western punditry, the credibility stakes are much higher. India’s bellicose media declares that Pakistan has gone 2-1 up in the series (counting the insurgent attack as Pakistan’s first move).

Islamabad gives foreign interlocutors the same message as it normally does — the Indians hit Pakistan directly and repeatedly, Pakistan has returned the blow with some interest (or Profit/Loss Sharing, if one is being Sharia-compliant) and a ceasefire is welcome.

New Delhi, however, spurns such offers, recalling the repeated humiliation it suffered at Trump’s hands in 2025, and orders another round of even more wide-ranging missile strikes. Pakistan, anticipating this, moves to destroy as many of the Indian missiles as possible before they can be used. The result is an uncontrolled exchange of air, drone and missile fire across the whole of Pakistan and the northern half of India.

As losses mount on both sides, the leaders in New Delhi and Islamabad are forced to keep trying to one-up the other, in what is now a futile pursuit of the resolve paradox. The traditional causes of war (fear, interest, honour) merge with hyper-nationalism, ancient hatreds and unhinged social media, to make all-out war seem like a preferable option.

THE SPECTRE OF ARMAGEDDON

From a historian’s perspective, far less serious crises (like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914) have triggered far greater conflicts. While history offers many instructive lessons about the larger drivers of conflict and can lead us to reliably predict that war has become inevitable, the precise process of transition from peace to war is not clearly understood.

Anyone selling ‘escalation management’ or ‘crisis management’ as a permanent approach towards situations like that of India-Pakistan is grossly overestimating the ability of leaderships to remain rational under repeated rounds of serious domestic pressure and perceived threats to their credibility.

Just because one round ends without a war, doesn’t mean the next one will. And if the rounds continue to take place, it is inevitable that one will lead to an uncontrolled escalation.

This is the reality of the India-Pakistan doomsday machine. In theory, the threat of nuclear conflict is so serious, and the consequences of even a limited exchange so dreadful, that it is insanity for nuclear powers to trade military blows the way India and Pakistan just did.

Pakistan’s challenge is to raise the costs for India’s military aggression to get it to back off from its policy of arbitrarily using military force. But the amount of punishment this would entail inflicting on India would also push India towards further escalation.

So, in trying to restore deterrence-normalcy, Pakistan might push India into all-out war and, in trying to create and enlarge the scope of conventional conflict with Pakistan (India’s ‘new normal’), India might grievously miscalculate the extent of Pakistani retaliation and find itself having to choose between another humiliating climbdown or further escalation beyond what can be managed.

This is not a scenario the rest of the world can live with. A nuclear war between India-Pakistan would not only obliterate the two contending powers, but it would also lead to catastrophic global famine that could claim one to two billion lives and cause worldwide social and political collapse within a few months of the atomic exchange. India-Pakistan and their troubles could be ignored by the rest of the world so long as deterrence held.

India’s pushing the region into a post-deterrence framework means that the world can no longer pretend that what happens in South Asia will stay in South Asia. The doomsday machine can still be stopped — but India and Pakistan need sustained engagement from their friends to help them do so.

And their friends ought to do so not out of any sympathy with the Kashmiris, Pakistanis or Indians, but for the sake of their own survival, which is presently imperilled by an excitable New Delhi and a grimly determined Islamabad.

The writer is most recently the author of New World Empires: Cultures of Power and Governance in the Americas and a professor of history at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. X: @IlhanNiaz

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 6th, 2025