India and Pakistan Maintain Nuclear Restraint Amid Rising Regional Tensions in South Asia
The May 2025 India-Pakistan crisis serves as a critical point of analysis for contemporary escalation patterns under a nuclear overhang.
Unlike earlier crises where nuclear signalling was overt and escalation slow-moving, the post-Pahalgam crisis was marked by an operational tempo which was rapid with muted strategic messaging. The persistence of the nuclear threshold in the May crisis, despite fast-paced, high-tempo exchanges, underscores a deeper logic at play. It must be acknowledged that both India and Pakistan have found ways to absorb and respond to strategic shocks without needing to invoke nuclear signalling. This should not be seen merely as restraint but as recognition of available space within the conventional domain for calibrated punishment, signalling, and deterrence.
The tempo of escalation during the crisis may have accelerated due to ISR or Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance compression and technological integration, but the politico-military calculus remained cautious as was evident by the Indian Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan’s statement, “…I found both sides displaying a lot of rationality in their thoughts as well as actions. So why should we assume that in the nuclear domain, there will be irrationality on someone else’s part?”
Nuclear weapons continue to play their stabilising role, not as warfighting tools, but as boundary-setters. Both sides appear to understand that crossing the threshold would not guarantee victory, only mutual ruin. Thus, nuclear restraint persists not in spite of technological change, but because of the enduring clarity of its consequences, and the emerging utility of high-end conventional options that can serve strategic objectives without breaching the nuclear ceiling.
It is in this context that the often-invoked Herman Kahn’s escalation ladder needs to be revisited to update the framework to incorporate modern developments in drone warfare, cyber operations, and missile engagements in the South Asian context.
Kahn Meets Compression: South Asia’s Shorter, Faster, Unstructured Crises
Key observations from the 87-hour confrontation reveal a distinct shift in the character of crisis engagement. Perhaps most striking was the near absence of explicit nuclear signalling, a sharp contrast to the visible nuclear brinkmanship seen during the 2001-2002 standoff and the 2019 Pulwama-Balakot crisis. The conflict demonstrated rapid but controlled Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loops, suggesting strategic restraint under high operational stress.
Applying Kahn’s escalation ladder to the May 2025 events demonstrates that the conflict largely occupied the middle rungs. Initial sub-crisis manoeuvres, such as the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty by India and elevated troop alertness, gave way to political and diplomatic harassment tactics. These were followed by demonstrations of military readiness through raised air force alert levels and naval posturing in the Arabian Sea. Harassing acts of violence, particularly intensified Line of Control (LoC) shelling, transitioned into more significant spectacles like Pakistan’s drone saturation raids and India’s radar neutralisation operations with Harpy drones.
Kahn’s Escalation Ladder & The Post-Pahalgam May 2025 Crisis
| Kahn’s Rung (Simplified) | May 2025 Crisis Mapping | Snapshot |
|---|---|---|
| 1–6: Sub-crisis Maneuvering (diplomatic, symbolic shows) | Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance (India, April 23); heightened troop alertness | Pre-conflict signalling. Sub-crisis jockeying. |
| 7–9: Political, Economic, Diplomatic Harassment | Indian diplomatic boycott, Pakistani signaling via NSC meeting, followed suit | Usual political isolation tactics deployed. |
| 10: Show of Force (military exercises, posturing) | IAF and PAF alert levels raised; naval posturing in Arabian Sea | Typical deterrence shows. |
| 11–13: Harassing Acts of Violence | Line of Control (LoC) firing post-May 7 Indian airstrikes on Pakistan | Intensified shelling; standard in crises. |
| 14–17: Spectacular Show of Force (probes, major exercises) | Drone saturation raids by Pakistan and India’s radar neutralisations with Harpy drones | Drones normalised as strategic signals, new feature post-2019. |
| 18–19: Controlled Military Clash | India’s May 7 airstrikes (Operation Sindoor) | India conducted precision, symbolic strikes inside Pakistan. First-ever BrahMos, SCALP use. Pakistan used JF-17 Block III and J-10C aircraft during aerial engagements and as per Pakistani official accounts (corroborated by some international reports) downed Indian Rafales, MiG-29, Mirage 2000, and a Su-30. |
| 20–23: Provocative Breaking off of Negotiations, Harsh Ultimatums | Public refusal of de-escalation by Pakistan-ISPR (May 9) | Pakistan’s escalation in rhetoric; harder stance. |
| 24–26: Large Conventional War without WMD Use | Intensified drone, missile, artillery exchanges (May 7–10) | Clear, sustained conventional kinetic conflict; standoff range. |
| 27–29: Demonstrative Nuclear Alerts/Warnings | Muted nuclear signalling; NCA meeting scheduled then pulled back | New trend: Extremely restrained overt nuclear signalling. |
| 30–32: Exemplary Attacks on Military Targets | India’s May 10 strikes on Pakistani airbases and radar sites | Targeting strategic air defenses, command and control. Cratering runways, not nuclear facilities. 1988 non-attack on nuclear facilities agreement held. |
| 33–35: Exemplary Attacks on Infrastructure | Not Crossed (no dams, no cities targeted) | Limited targeting; restraint. |
| 36–38: Demonstrative Nuclear Explosion | Not Crossed | No nuclear tests. No explicit nuclear readiness. |
| 39–44: Tactical Nuclear Use to General War | Not Crossed | Crisis managed well below nuclear threshold. |
Note: The nuclear rungs still exist, but India and Pakistan are creating more ‘subconventional’ rungs to avoid escalation to nuclear levels.
Nuclear signalling remained muted, with an initially announced National Command Authority meeting by Pakistan which did not take place. The 1988 Indo-Pak non-attack agreement on each other’s nuclear facilities also held during the crisis.
Beneath the Threshold: The Quiet Expansion of Escalation Options
New rungs have emerged on the traditional escalation ladder, reflecting advances in military technology and doctrine. Drone saturation attacks, cruise missile strikes, drone-assisted suppression of air defenses, information ops and high-visibility cyber disruptions have introduced sub-conventional options below the nuclear threshold in South Asia. These rungs have allowed both states to exert coercive pressure while carefully managing escalation risks
An emerging and underappreciated dimension of escalation involves the role of digital proxy soldiers operating in the information domain. This includes the use of deepfakes, media disinformation campaigns, and battlefield pre-conditioning through manipulated narratives. The information environment is increasingly weaponized to distort perceptions, shape domestic and international opinion, and create strategic ambiguity. These activities precede and accompany kinetic action, effectively adding a new rung to the escalation ladder. This ‘wormhole escalation‘ bypasses traditional conflict phases by accelerating cognitive and psychological warfare, disorienting adversaries before conventional operations even begin. In this domain, attribution remains deliberately blurred, complicating retaliation and allowing escalation below the visible threshold of military engagement.
Projection for the Next India-Pakistan Crisis
Looking ahead, future India-Pakistan crises are expected to begin at a higher baseline, around rung 18, with standoff missile and drone attacks normalized as initial moves. The time available for crisis management will likely shrink, with escalation moving swiftly from precision strikes to high-value airbase and radar targeting. Public nuclear signaling is projected to remain muted, with backchannel communications among national security advisors and diplomatic envoys assuming greater importance.
Strategic stability in South Asia once understood as the ability to halt movement up a clear ladder, now depends on navigating a dynamic ecosystem of conventional options, emerging technologies, and alliance entanglements.
This transformation, however, cannot be explained solely through the dyadic lens of India and Pakistan. The region is increasingly embedded in what might be called a global systems stress lab, where strategic technologies, doctrines, and platforms are tested in live conflict scenarios under the shadow of great power rivalry. As India integrates Western ISR systems, precision munitions, and missile defences, and Pakistan adopts Chinese-enabled modular warfare models including BeiDou-integrated targeting and electronic warfare, South Asia risks becoming a proxy battleground for the operational validation of external military systems.
This is not merely technological convergence; it is doctrinal experimentation outsourced to a nuclear theatre. In such a context, the future of strategic stability will not be determined by bilateral deterrence logic alone, but by the second-order consequences of upstream alignments and the absence of effective restraint mechanisms from the very powers supplying these capabilities.
The military balance in South Asia is being restructured not merely in hardware but in logic. The post-Pahalgam May 2025 crisis reflected this very shift. India’s force posture operated under an ISR-enabled shield, while Pakistan’s response drew on Chinese-supplied modular systems and real-time satellite integration. Crisis response was no longer sequential but simultaneous, unfolding across multiple domains with little room for diplomatic buffering.
Reframing South Asian Strategic Space
Rather than collapsing into nuclear confrontation, the next crisis might serve as a proof of concept for extended conventional warfare (still not full-blown all-out conventional war) under the nuclear shadow. Strategic depth is no longer geographic, it is doctrinal and technological. And both India and Pakistan have matured just enough to know that crossing the nuclear line ends the game for everyone. So, they won’t cross it and will continue to play the game.
The question remains: is the threshold for nuclear use in the India-Pakistan context overstatedly fragile? Perhaps, yes. The analysis on the current crisis behaviour suggests that the nuclear threshold has been further lowered post-May 2025. But in reality, under the conditions mentioned earlier, the nuclear threshold between the two remains high. However, the space below it is now densely populated with high-velocity conventional, cyber, and informational tools. The logic of escalation has shifted, not toward inevitability of nuclear use, but toward greater scope for intense conventional punitive actions by both states without triggering nuclear retaliation. This is not de-escalation through denial, but deterrence through multi-domain manoeuvre and reputational signalling.
Strategic stability in South Asia, therefore, will not rest on singular red lines but on the management of simultaneity, signalling, and speed.
What the next crisis will demand is not a pause between rungs, but resilience within them, a capacity to absorb shocks, decipher intent, and avoid miscalculation in a battlespace where escalation may no longer be a ladder, but a horizontal storm.
