Reconceptualizing Strategic Stability in South Asia

Nuclear-armed states do not go to war with each other due to the fear of mutual annihilation. This principle, mainly derived from the Cold War experience, remains relevant amongst all the major nuclear powers but was recently violated between the two South Asian nuclear adversaries. The May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict that witnessed extensive use of manned and unmanned aircraft besides other emerging and disruptive technologies had the potential to escalate to a major war. India’s persistent efforts to explore space for a limited war under a nuclear overhang, in 2019 and more recently in 2025, have strained the limits of strategic stability between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, thus raising questions about its continued relevance, and whether there is a need to reconceptualize this Cold War construct for a peculiar South Asian regional security environment.

Strategic stability between major nuclear weapon states is defined as the lack of incentive to launch a nuclear ‘first strike’ due to a fear of mutual annihilation. There is, however, no single definition to describe strategic stability, and most states have tailored it to their peculiar security environment with different interpretations of strategic stability.

In South Asia, since none of the two adversaries has the capability to launch a classic disarming ‘first strike’ against the other, therefore, strategic stability could be defined more broadly as the ‘absence of an armed conflict’. Due to the nature of India-Pakistan adversarial relations, a crisis triggered even by an act of a non-state actor could quickly escalate to a major war with the possibility of a nuclear exchange. It is therefore important that to preserve strategic stability, not only a major war, but the entire spectrum of conflict needs to be avoided.

India and Pakistan have fought three major wars before both countries formally declared themselves as nuclear weapon states in 1998. After their overt nuclearization, there has been no major conflict which highlights the significance of nuclear weapons in maintaining strategic stability between the two countries. This fact was acknowledged by their leadership and was endorsed in their 2004 Joint Statement, where the two sides agreed that the nuclear capabilities of each other constitute a factor for stability in the region.

Interestingly, while the political leadership reached a consensus on the salience of nuclear weapons for the region, the Indian military in 2004 launched its new war-fighting doctrine of Cold Start. To prevent India from operationalizing its new doctrine and to ensure strategic stability, Pakistan introduced its ‘Full Spectrum Deterrence’ (FSD) posture, which included conventional as well as nuclear responses – to deter the entire spectrum of threats ranging from tactical-level military operations to a major war with India.

Faced with the dilemma of uncontrolled escalation risk, the Indian military could not operationalize its Cold Start doctrine, and instead opted for a ground-based surgical strike across the Line of Control (LoC) in 2016. Pakistan did not respond and dismissed India’s claim, which may have encouraged the Indian side to use it for domestic politics and declare it to be a ‘new norm’ for the future.

During the 2019 crisis, triggered by a suicide attack on Indian paramilitary forces in the Indian occupied Kashmir, India launched aerial surgical strike across the Line of Control (LoC). This was a serious escalation since some of the payload dropped by the Indian Air Force (IAF) landed in the mainland Pakistan, near the town of Balakot. Pakistan responded with its own counter-aerial surgical strike that resulted in shooting down of two of the Indian aircraft.

The next Pahalgam crisis of May 2025 was distinctly different from the previous two crises. Instead of conducting a limited strike, India targeted several places across the LoC and the international border inside mainland Pakistan. The aerial engagement between the two sides was one of the largest in the modern history with over 100 aircraft employed by both the sides, and which resulted in shooting down six of the Indian aircraft. Amongst these at least four were the most advanced Rafaele aircraft that India had purchased after the 2019 humiliation, with an expectation that these would provide the IAF with significant advantage over the PAF in the future crisis.

Despite serious reputational and military losses suffered by India during the May 2025 conflict, some Indian scholars are of the view that since Pakistan had not resorted to the use of its tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs), therefore, India has been able to call Pakistan’s ‘nuclear bluff’. Contrary to the Indian perception, Pakistan’s TNWs were never intended to be used at the onset of a crisis. As part of its FSD posture, Pakistan has adequate conventional responses, and if these were considered as not sufficient, only then there could be a possibility of a nuclear use. This posture was manifested in 2019 and more recently in 2025, where Pakistan was able to achieve its political objectives through conventional means without resorting to the threat or use of nuclear weapons. Similarly, the assumption that India now has expanded space for a conventional conflict with Pakistan is problematic and dangerous and could push the region towards a serious military crisis, especially if India continues to explore space for an expanded conventional conflict without taking into consideration Pakistan’s FSD posture.

Despite India’s military defeats in 2019 and 2025, India has exploited the two crises to achieve political advantages. In August 2019, India unilaterally changed the status of occupied territory of Kashmir by revoking Article 370. More recently, India has suspended the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) and has threatened to use water as a coercive mean to influence Pakistan’s choices. These are serious existential challenges for Pakistan that require all possible measures, including the possibility of use of military means as an instrument of policy.

To force India revert its actions, Pakistan may resort to diplomatic, political and legal means, but in a current international environment with diminishing credibility of global institutions, it is unlikely that peaceful efforts could yield a favourable outcome. To safeguard its core national security interests, Pakistan may have to eventually resort to the use of military as an instrument of policy. Since India has declared that the use of force to be a new norm, Pakistan could also review its concept of strategic stability and reciprocate India by shifting its posture from ‘defensive deterrence’ to ‘offensive deterrence’. This may include the options of ‘preventive’ as well as ‘pre-emptive’ measures to deter India from engaging in a military conflict or undermining Pakistan’s national security.

The advent of new technologies and the impact it had in May 2025 conflict indicate that some of these technologies are likely to be used with more frequency in a future crisis between India and Pakistan. This could make the existing construct of strategic stability, which is the absence of an armed conflict, as redundant, thus highlighting the need for its reconceptualization. Strategic stability, from a Pakistani perspective should therefore, not only be a capacity to deter major conventional or a nuclear war, but it should also be able to raise the cost, if India decides to launch limited surgical strikes through manned or unmanned aircraft, or engages in covert sub-conventional activities by inciting terrorism inside Pakistan.