Analysis: India and Pakistan are having to rethink their assumptions about each other at a time when they also have to consider fast-moving changes in the outside world
That said, this crisis is a step-change on those that preceded it. The Indian airstrikes alone would justify its description as a watershed. On top of that, it is happening at a time when Western countries are preoccupied with their own problems. It is thus a crisis that combines two new and unpredictable elements: a willingness by India and Pakistan to raise the stakes in ways they have not done before and an unwillingness or inability by Western countries to intervene to stop them.
The India-Pakistan crises that followed the nuclear tests fell into a predictable pattern, though it did not seem that way at the time. Pakistan would test how far it could use the protection of its nuclear umbrella to push back against India. In turn, India would threaten reprisals while refraining from attacking Pakistan directly.
In 2001-2002, India mobilized its army after an attack on the Indian parliament by militant groups based in Pakistan. Again, India refrained from crossing into Pakistan. The United States led international pressure on Pakistan to rein in its jihadi proxies, averting a war. But the anti-India Islamist militant groups flourishing in Pakistan were curbed rather than eliminated.
It is that equilibrium which has now disappeared. India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has clearly decided that the gains of strategic restraint are no longer worth the pain of tolerating sporadic attacks by Pakistan-based militant groups. Pakistan in turn can no longer assume its nuclear weapons protect it from Indian retaliation. In that sense, both countries are rewriting their own rules and assumptions at the same time.
In the past, Washington has also been able to elicit support from China, which despite being Pakistan’s main ally and a traditional rival with India, has frowned on any adventurism that might destabilize the region. But trade rows between the United States and China mean their relations are now far more frayed than during previous crises.
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