The Unfinished Conflict: The Structure and Implications of the India–Pakistan Dispute through the Lens of the Pahalgam Terror Attack

​Yoon Jung Choi

yjchoi@sejong.org

Principal Research Fellow

Sejong Institute​

Introduction

The large-scale terrorist attack carried out on 22 April 2025 in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, marked a watershed in South Asian security. The indiscriminate massacre of Hindu pilgrims, which left 26 civilians dead, was not simply an eruption of religious hatred. It was the latest and most vivid manifestation of a structural conflict that has shaped relations between India and Pakistan for more than seven decades.

In the immediate aftermath, major international actors—including the United Nations, the European Union, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—joined numerous states in condemning the attack. Yet the crisis quickly escalated into the most serious military confrontation since the 1999 Kargil War, reigniting fears of a Cold War–style nuclear standoff in South Asia.

The implications of the attack extend far beyond a bilateral dispute. The conflict has become increasingly complex and intractable as it has become entangled with religious identity, domestic political incentives, asymmetric military capabilities, nuclear armament, and the broader U.S.–China strategic rivalry. The incident also underlined that, even among nuclear-armed states, terrorism and irregular warfare can spark serious military confrontation—raising fundamental questions about the stability of nuclear deterrence and the robustness of the international security architecture.

In the wake of Pahalgam, India embarked on an extensive diplomatic campaign to justify its counterterrorism and anti-Pakistan posture and to mobilize international support. From 25–26 May 2025, a cross-party parliamentary delegation representing five major political parties visited South Korea, meeting with government officials, academics, and media representatives. During these discussions, the delegation urged Seoul—then a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council—to support India’s position and to cooperate in designating Pakistan for the Financial Action Task Force blacklist.

The Pahalgam Terror Attack: Incident Overview and Responses

The Tragedy at a Kashmir Tourist Site

On 22 April 2025, armed militants launched an indiscriminate shooting attack in Pahalgam, a major Hindu pilgrimage destination in southern Jammu and Kashmir. Their targets were Hindu tourists. Twenty-six civilians were killed. The brutality of the attack was apparent in its execution: family groups were separated at gunpoint, some taken into nearby forests and fields and ordered to recite the Islamic declaration of faith, the Kalima. Those who failed were summarily executed on the spot. The massacre was thus both an act of extreme religious intolerance and a targeted campaign of killing.

Pahalgam’s geopolitical and symbolic significance magnified the impact of the attack. The town lies along the Amarnath Yatra, one of Hinduism’s most prominent pilgrimage routes, and sits within Anantnag district, an area long associated with militant activity. It is therefore a place where religious symbolism and security sensitivities converge. Shortly after the attack, a Pakistan-based militant group calling itself The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed responsibility on Telegram. Established in 2019, TRF is widely believed to be a splinter or front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based Islamist militant group.

In its initial statement, TRF declared that it “would not tolerate the settlement of outsiders in Kashmir,” framing the attack as retaliation against India’s post-2019 measures granting permanent residency and property rights to non-local residents. The message was widely interpreted as a direct challenge to New Delhi’s Kashmir integration policy and an extreme expression of separatist resistance rooted in religious identity. Yet within days, both the Pakistani government and TRF publicly denied involvement. TRF abruptly retracted its earlier claim, asserting that its account had been hacked—a reversal widely seen as an attempt to evade accountability amid domestic outrage and international condemnation over the mass killing of civilians.

India’s Strong Response and Pakistan’s Countermeasures

The Indian government identified three key perpetrators, two of whom were confirmed to be Pakistani nationals, reinforcing New Delhi’s conviction that the attack had been orchestrated with the involvement of Pakistan-based actors. Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned terrorism in general but categorically denied any link to the incident, accusing India of making “baseless and habitual” allegations. Analysts interpreted TRF’s retraction as an effort—likely encouraged by Islamabad—to contain the diplomatic fallout.

New Delhi officially characterized the Pahalgam attack as an act of war and a grave violation of Indian sovereignty orchestrated by Pakistan-based terrorist organizations in coordination with Pakistani intelligence services. The government announced its intention to carry out large-scale retaliation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi canceled his overseas engagements, convened a meeting of the National Security Council, and vowed an “unwavering commitment to counterterrorism,” pledging that those responsible would be brought to justice.

Within hours, Indian authorities publicly cited evidence of Pakistani involvement and announced a sweeping series of retaliatory measures. These were comprehensive and multidimensional. India suspended implementation of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, closed major border crossings, halted the issuance of visas to Pakistani nationals, and expelled senior Pakistani diplomats. It imposed restrictions on trade and remittances and suspended cultural exchanges, thereby intensifying economic pressure. Home Minister Amit Shah personally visited Kashmir, declared a special security alert, enforced a nighttime curfew, and launched extensive search operations to identify local collaborators.

The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty inflicted particular damage on Pakistan. Given Pakistan’s heavy dependence on the Indus River for agriculture and hydropower, any disruption of water flows from India poses a direct threat to its food and energy security. Islamabad warned that unilateral suspension of the treaty would be regarded as an act of war. After India’s declaration, Pakistan accused New Delhi of violating international law and lodged a strong formal protest.

Under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s National Security Council convened an emergency session, condemning India’s unilateral accusations and countermeasures and promising a “full-spectrum” response. Pakistan subsequently announced the suspension of the 1972 Simla Agreement, banned Indian aircraft from its airspace, and severed all remaining trade ties. The Simla Agreement, which had served as a cornerstone of bilateral relations by committing the two sides to peaceful dispute resolution based on the Line of Control, had long symbolized a minimal shared commitment to diplomacy. Its suspension thus marked a significant escalation and an explicit abandonment of even that thin framework of engagement.

Operation Sindoor and Operation Bunyanun Marsoos

Within ten days of the attack, these hardline measures escalated into the largest military confrontation since Kargil. On 2 May 2025, India launched Operation Sindoor, a limited military operation targeting terrorist hideouts in Pakistan-administered territory. The operation involved Indian special forces crossing the Line of Control to conduct precision strikes—the most extensive Indian cross-border military action since 1999.

The name Sindoor—a red powder traditionally worn by married Hindu women and historically used by warriors—was chosen to signal India’s resolve to avenge the victims and restore justice through decisive retaliation against terrorism. On 7 May 2025, the Indian Armed Forces expanded the operation, conducting a large-scale air campaign using precision-guided missiles and fighter aircraft to strike nine identified terrorist camps and hideouts in Punjab and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Pakistan retaliated with Operation Bunyanun Marsus, launched on 3 May, targeting Indian military logistics facilities and forward posts in Jammu and Kashmir using short-range ballistic missiles and combat drones. The operation’s name, meaning “a solid wall,” is drawn from Qur’an 61:4—“Indeed, Allah loves those who fight in His cause as though they are a solid structure”—underscoring the religious symbolism Pakistan attached to its response.

The confrontation also showcased the effectiveness of Chinese-origin systems in real combat, highlighting Pakistan’s capacity to challenge Western-made platforms. Pakistan reportedly employed Chinese-provided AI-based target-recognition systems, drone technologies, and JF-17 fighter aircraft, and claimed that its J-10C fighters shot down six Indian planes. Both sides engaged in sustained artillery and rocket exchanges along the Line of Control, causing dozens of military and civilian casualties.

The material damage was substantial. Pakistan claimed to have downed five Indian aircraft, including two Rafales, while acknowledging the loss of nine of its own aircraft as well as several drones and missile systems. India confirmed limited air losses but asserted that it had successfully neutralized multiple militant targets. The escalation pushed India–Pakistan tensions to their highest point in decades, under the shadow of two growing nuclear arsenals.

The Emergence of a New Doctrine and Strategic Shifts

The most consequential development came on 13 May 2025, when Prime Minister Modi announced a new national security doctrine expected to serve as a template for India’s future counterterrorism and Pakistan policy. The doctrine rests on three core principles.

First, India reserves the right to determine the timing, method, and intensity of retaliation according to its own standards, unconstrained by nuclear threats or external diplomatic pressure.

Second, New Delhi seeks to neutralize nuclear coercion by declaring that it will no longer be deterred by Pakistan’s nuclear posture and will, if necessary, conduct limited wars and precision strikes.

Third, the doctrine rejects any distinction between terrorists and their state sponsors, treating terrorist organizations, their backers, and supportive states as equally legitimate targets.

This shift marked a fundamental recalibration of India’s strategic thinking. It signaled a move away from traditional restraint and defensive deterrence toward a more proactive, and potentially preemptive, security posture. Over time, this doctrinal shift could reshape the balance of power and patterns of crisis behavior in South Asia.

Historical Origins and Structural Drivers of the Conflict

The Legacy of Partition and Identity Conflict

The Kashmir conflict has its origins in the end of British colonial rule in 1947 and the partition of the Indian subcontinent along the lines of the Two-Nation Theory. That theory held that Hindus and Muslims constituted separate nations that could not peacefully coexist within a single state and therefore required distinct political entities. India embraced a secular vision of a unified state; Pakistan was established as a Muslim-majority homeland.

Partition produced one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes of the twentieth century: more than 15 million people were displaced, and roughly one million were killed in communal violence. At the heart of the crisis lay the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, whose political status remained unresolved. Although about 77 percent of its population was Muslim, the state was ruled by a Hindu monarch, Maharaja Hari Singh. When Pakistan-backed tribal militias invaded, the Maharaja acceded to India and requested military assistance.

The First Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–48 followed. It ended through UN mediation, establishing a ceasefire line—later the Line of Control (LoC)—that effectively divided Kashmir between the two states. Yet no final settlement on sovereignty was reached, and the conflict remained unresolved. Kashmir thus became a persistent flashpoint and sparked three additional wars between India and Pakistan, in 1965, 1971, and 1999.

Pakistan has long claimed Kashmir on the grounds that, as a Muslim-majority region, it properly belongs to Pakistan and is central to the Two-Nation Theory underpinning Pakistan’s identity and statehood. India, by contrast, insists that Kashmir is an integral part of the Indian Union, protected under its constitutional framework and grounded in principles of secularism and national unity. This collision of identity and territorial claims has produced one of the most enduring and volatile disputes in modern international relations.

Proxy Warfare and the Institutionalization of Terrorism

Since 1989, a full-scale armed separatist movement has taken root in Indian-administered Kashmir, characterized by recurrent uprisings and terrorist attacks against Indian security forces. The conflict has caused tens of thousands of deaths. In May 1999, Pakistan-backed militants, supported by regular Pakistani troops, infiltrated the Kargil heights, triggering the Kargil War. The conflict shocked the international community as the first direct military confrontation between two declared nuclear powers in the post–Cold War era.

In December 2001, terrorists affiliated with Pakistan-based groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, killing nine and injuring eighteen after a prolonged gun battle. In November 2008, militants associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba launched a large-scale coordinated assault in Mumbai, targeting hotels, a Jewish center, and a train station through shootings and hostage-taking. The attacks killed 166 people and wounded more than 300.

Indian investigators later uncovered communications, maritime infiltration routes, and training records pointing to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistan’s intelligence services. The UN Security Council and major powers demanded that Pakistan investigate and dismantle the organizations involved. Yet similar attacks continued, including the 2016 strike on an Indian Army base at Uri and the 2019 suicide bombing in Pulwama that killed members of India’s Central Reserve Police Force. Each episode revived allegations of Pakistan-based militant involvement and reinforced India’s critique of Pakistan’s proxy-war strategy.

Pakistan has consistently denied sponsoring terrorism, claiming to provide only diplomatic and moral support to Kashmiri “freedom fighters.” India, however, maintains that Pakistan’s intelligence services have offered direct logistical, financial, and operational backing to militant networks. A widely held view in the international community is that Pakistan’s security establishment has long instrumentalized groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed as proxies to exert leverage in India and Afghanistan—blurring the line between state and non-state actors in South Asia’s conflict dynamics.

The Interplay Between Domestic Politics and Conflict

Kashmir remains one of the world’s most intractable conflicts not only because of its historical and geopolitical roots, but also because it is deeply entangled with the domestic political calculations of both India and Pakistan.

In August 2019, the Indian government revoked Article 370 of the constitution, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special status and transforming it into a federally administered territory. The move tightened New Delhi’s direct control and was followed by policies encouraging the migration of non-local residents and the return of Hindu populations—effectively altering the region’s demographic trajectory.

Critics interpreted this policy as an attempt to weaken secessionist sentiment and pre-empt any future UN-sponsored plebiscite. The measures inflamed resentment among Kashmiri Muslims and invited a faster response from Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment. The Modi government, however, justified the changes as part of a broader effort to promote integration and economic development, citing higher tourist numbers and improved security indicators as proof of a “zero terrorism” and “complete peace” narrative strengthening India’s claim over Kashmir.

Yet the local elections of September 2024 delivered a majority to a coalition of parties skeptical of New Delhi’s integration agenda, signaling widespread discontent. Even so, the Modi government insisted that Kashmir had “returned to normalcy,” emphasizing the peaceful conduct of the vote. Against this backdrop, the Pahalgam attack was not only a massacre of Hindu civilians but also a direct challenge to India’s narrative of normalization and territorial integration.

The incident also undercut New Delhi’s diplomatic strategy of framing Kashmir purely as an internal matter. Rather than closing the file internationally, the Pahalgam crisis reignited external scrutiny and calls for engagement. Pakistan, for its part, has long been accused of using the Kashmir issue and militant groups as instruments of domestic political management and foreign policy. Islamabad maintains that its support for Kashmiri resistance is strictly diplomatic and moral, but the persistence of cross-border terrorism continues to deepen mistrust and obstruct efforts at durable peace.

Pakistan’s powerful army chief, General Asim Munir, has been criticized for using the Kashmir issue to divert attention from the country’s economic crisis and to maintain cohesion within the military. Critics also argue that Pakistan continues to exploit its nuclear status as a form of “nuclear blackmail” to draw international attention and leverage. This perception was reinforced when, amid the Pahalgam crisis, the IMF approved a USD 2.4 billion tranche of Pakistan’s USD 7 billion bailout on 8 May 2025, prompting speculation that Islamabad was using the heightened tensions to extract financial and political concessions.

Asymmetry of Power and Dependence on Nuclear Weapons

India surpasses Pakistan by a wide margin in population, economic scale, and resources—a structural asymmetry that shapes both states’ military and diplomatic strategies. The economic gap is particularly important. India’s nominal GDP is around USD 4.2 trillion, the world’s fourth largest, while Pakistan’s is roughly USD 374.6 billion—a difference of more than ten to one.

India maintains robust growth of around 6.5 percent, whereas Pakistan’s growth hovers near 3 percent, constrained by high inflation and chronic foreign exchange shortages. India has diversified its economy into IT, manufacturing, and services; Pakistan remains heavily dependent on agriculture and has lagged in structural reform. The disparity in foreign exchange reserves is similarly stark: India holds approximately USD 697.6 billion, compared to Pakistan’s roughly USD 11.4 billion.

Control over water resources is another strategic variable. India holds the upper reaches of the Indus River system, while Pakistan controls the lower reaches. The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 survived three wars, but after Pahalgam India began to use it explicitly as a tool of pressure. For Pakistan, where agriculture and hydropower rely heavily on Indus flows, disruption is tantamount to a threat to food and energy security. Islamabad warned that a suspension of the treaty would be considered an act of war and protested that India’s move violated international law.

This broad asymmetry in national power translates into an imbalance in defense investment. India has steadily expanded its arsenal of advanced weapons through domestic production and foreign procurement. Pakistan, by contrast, relies heavily on Chinese-made platforms. Its defense budget is roughly one-eighth of India’s, constraining its ability to modernize its forces.

Faced with this conventional imbalance, Pakistan has come to depend disproportionately on nuclear weapons. It recognizes that it has little chance of prevailing in a direct conventional war. Islamabad has expanded its nuclear arsenal by operating four plutonium production reactors, increasing uranium enrichment, and developing new delivery systems. As of 2023, Pakistan was estimated to possess roughly 170 nuclear warheads, with projections that it may reach about 200 by the late 2020s. India, for its part, was estimated in early 2023 to possess around 680 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium—enough for up to 210 nuclear warheads.

The Projection of U.S.–China Rivalry in South Asia

The Pahalgam crisis also highlights how U.S.–China strategic competition is increasingly playing out in South Asia. China has bolstered Pakistan’s economic and military capabilities through the USD 62 billion China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and large-scale arms transfers. Centered on Gwadar Port, CPEC serves multiple strategic purposes: providing China with an alternative route to the Strait of Malacca, facilitating expansion toward Afghanistan, extending Chinese maritime influence into the Indian Ocean, and embedding the Belt and Road Initiative more deeply into South Asia.

During the crisis, multiple indicators suggested that Chinese-origin systems were employed in combat. Military cooperation between China and Pakistan has intensified through the sale of J-35 stealth fighters, the transfer of nuclear submarine technology, and joint exercises. Pakistan is highly dependent on China in advanced areas such as AI-enabled weaponry, early warning systems, and ballistic missile defense.

The United States has responded by elevating India to a central role in its Indo-Pacific strategy. Washington has strengthened its China-containment posture by including India in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, deepening consultations within the Quad, and approving major defense deals. Since 2025, under the U.S.–India Major Defense Partnership framework extending through 2035, Washington approved the supply of F-35 fighter aircraft and the additional acquisition of P-8I maritime patrol aircraft, as well as a separate military cooperation package worth 131 million dollars to strengthen Indo-Pacific maritime domain awareness.”

The competition to secure strategic footholds across the Indian Ocean, to finance port and connectivity projects, and to dominate maritime domain awareness illustrates that the maritime rivalry between the United States and China now fully encompasses South Asia.

Assessment and Outlook of the Conflict

Domestic Political Dynamics and the Rise of Nationalism

In India, the government has used the crisis to underline security threats and reinforce a nationalist narrative, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emphasizing the image of a “strong India” to consolidate electoral support. In the immediate aftermath of Pahalgam, calls for decisive retaliation spread rapidly. Mainstream media and social networks were dominated by demands to punish Pakistan and restore national pride, while opposition parties, wary of appearing weak on security, largely endorsed military counterterrorism operations.

Prime Minister Modi, whose 2019 reelection was built in part on a hardline response to terrorism, found it politically difficult to shift to a more conciliatory stance. With the Bihar state assembly elections scheduled for November 2025, the government appears to have calculated that terrorism and toughness toward Pakistan could serve as key electoral frames. Following the attack, Modi pressed ahead with visits and mass rallies in Bihar, emphasizing that India would not bow to terrorism.

This instrumentalization of crisis politics is closely linked to questions of social cohesion. There is growing concern that the hardline mood may further entrench the perception that the entire Kashmiri Muslim community constitutes a potential security threat, aggravating religious polarization. After the ceasefire agreement, some hardline groups continued to accuse the government of “yielding to U.S. mediation” and called for even stronger retaliation, maintaining pressure on policymakers to sustain a confrontational line.

In Pakistan, external confrontation is also being used as a tool of domestic politics, particularly as the military seeks to restore its prestige amid political turmoil and economic distress. Pakistan’s intelligence services and armed forces are widely seen as managing and shaping the crisis to bolster their own standing. After Pahalgam, Army Chief Asim Munir framed India’s actions as a national emergency and appealed for unity. The result has been a dangerous dynamic in which the domestic political incentives of both governments push decision-makers toward escalation rather than compromise.

Evolution of Military Doctrine After Nuclear Acquisition

Localized confrontations between India and Pakistan have increasingly escalated into serious military crises. Since their nuclear tests in 1998, both states have relied on nuclear deterrence and the logic of mutual assured destruction to prevent full-scale war. Yet the pattern of escalation—from India’s calibrated strikes after the 2016 Uri attack, to the Balakot airstrike following the 2019 Pulwama bombing, and now the operations after Pahalgam—suggests a clear upward trend in the frequency and intensity of clashes.

The Pahalgam crisis developed into the most serious military confrontation between India and Pakistan in the nuclear era and is widely cited as a vivid illustration of the instability of deterrence and its paradoxical relationship with escalation. It exemplifies the “stability–instability paradox,” in which strategic stability at the nuclear level coexists with, and may even encourage, low- to mid-intensity conflicts—deepening international concern.

In the wake of the crisis, senior Indian leaders, including Modi and the defense minister, publicly suggested that India could reconsider its traditional no-first-use principle depending on circumstances. Historically, India’s nuclear doctrine has rested on no first use and massive retaliation. Since 2019, however, there has been a discernible shift toward greater flexibility on no first use and an increased emphasis on integrated deterrence.

In the early 2000s, India adopted the “Cold Start” doctrine to enable rapid, limited conventional operations against Pakistan without crossing Islamabad’s nuclear threshold. The doctrine aims to constrain Pakistan’s options and secure international understanding by structuring India’s strategy around three phases: deterrence, retaliation, and conflict management. Pakistan, for its part, has moved away from any implied no-first-use posture. It has repeatedly framed Indian cross-LoC airstrikes as direct provocations and has signaled that it may consider early nuclear use options.

In response to India’s doctrinal adjustments, Pakistan has expanded its military readiness by redeploying forward forces and intensifying medium-range missile exercises. Its pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons further lowers the threshold for nuclear use. Pakistani officials have warned that Indian preemptive strikes—or actions such as cutting off water flows—could trigger nuclear retaliation. As the boundary between India’s non-nuclear punitive options and Pakistan’s declared nuclear red lines becomes increasingly blurred, almost any crisis involving military, territorial, economic, or political stakes risks approaching Pakistan’s perceived nuclear threshold, significantly heightening instability.

U.S.–China Strategic Rivalry and Geopolitical Implications

The Pahalgam crisis is tightly bound up with the broader evolution of U.S.–China competition in South Asia. Beijing has pursued a multi-layered strategy to constrain India and consolidate regional primacy, combining economic penetration through CPEC, deepening military ties with Pakistan, and strengthening its position along the Himalayan frontier and in the Indian Ocean.

CPEC aims to create a vast economic corridor linking Central Asia, South Asia, and the Indian Ocean, with Kashmir and Pakistan’s Balochistan province as critical nodes. For China, ensuring these areas remain under stable control by the Pakistani state is a core strategic interest. The United States, meanwhile, has reoriented its Indo-Pacific strategy and sought to expand its presence in South Asia by redefining India as a pivotal strategic partner and accelerating cooperation in economics, technology, and defense-industrial integration.

The Pahalgam crisis shows that South Asia is becoming a live testing ground for great-power competition in both military and technological domains. One hallmark of the confrontation was the operational deployment of Chinese-supplied systems. AI-enabled target identification, JF-17 fighters, and drone swarms used by Pakistan all relied on Chinese technology, and the crisis served as a demonstration of these systems’ capacity to compete with Western platforms.

Limits of the Multilateral System and Failures in Crisis Management

The Pahalgam crisis exposed, once again, the limits of the international community’s crisis-management capacity. The UN Security Council’s resolution condemning the attack did not explicitly designate The Resistance Front as a terrorist organization, and G7-led mediation efforts ran up against India’s long-standing refusal to accept third-party involvement, underscoring their constraints. Pakistan’s success—backed by China—in watering down references to TRF highlighted Beijing’s growing diplomatic influence and the relative weakening of Western leverage, while signaling the limited mediating power international organizations are likely to have in future South Asian disputes.

The crisis also fits a broader pattern of multilateral underperformance, seen in conflicts such as Russia–Ukraine and the Israel–Hamas–Iran confrontation. In Pahalgam as well, meaningful international engagement only began after military clashes were underway; there was no effective mechanism to prevent or preempt escalation.

The UN Security Council, the G7, and major-power diplomatic channels all moved reactively, not proactively. They lacked practical arrangements for mediation, de-escalation, or crisis prevention. In a context where few states or institutions can credibly play the role of honest broker, the quiet coordination between the United States and China and the Indian and Pakistani militaries through back channels was noteworthy—but ad hoc and far from an institutionalized mechanism.

Long-Term Outlook of the Conflict

India is likely to pursue an active diplomatic strategy to secure international support in its confrontation with Pakistan and to consolidate its status as an emerging major power. It may also emphasize the risk of military conflict with Pakistan for domestic political purposes. New Delhi has expressed disappointment that the United States and other key partners largely maintained neutrality, and President Trump’s remarks about mediating the ceasefire were criticized across the Indian political spectrum as undermining India’s longstanding opposition to third-party involvement.

At the 2025 G7 summit, Modi used the opportunity to initiate normalization with Canada—relations had deteriorated after the 2023 Sikh assassination case—while signaling his intent to again spotlight Pakistan’s support for terrorism on the global stage. Pakistan, for its part, will make strategic choices under the pressure of deepening economic crisis and the erosion of the military establishment’s domestic standing.

With youth unemployment nearing 30 percent, Islamabad may consider a range of options: further deepening economic and military dependence on China, intensifying confrontation with India, and leveraging tactical nuclear weapons as a deterrent and bargaining tool. With domestic political factors in both countries tightly bound up with questions of national identity—and with major-power competition amplifying regional tensions—the territorial dispute between India and Pakistan is likely to remain structurally entrenched.

The United States is expected to expand security cooperation with India as part of its broader strategy to counter China in South Asia. China will likely continue to increase the military and strategic utility of CPEC while expanding its influence in Pakistan and the wider region. Between India and Pakistan, a strategic framework premised on limited clashes under the shadow of nuclear deterrence is effectively hardening into a pattern: localized provocations, punitive strikes, and diplomatic de-escalation.

Looking ahead, conflict dynamics are likely to evolve toward localized, asymmetric confrontations—drone attacks along the Line of Control, cyber operations, and the use of proxy militant groups. Within this escalation-prone structure, a particularly troubling development is that doctrinal changes on both sides are lowering the nuclear threshold even as the frequency of armed clashes rises. Pakistan has formally rejected a no-first-use policy and suggested that Indian airstrikes across the LoC could trigger nuclear use; India, for its part, has moved away from its previous posture of strategic restraint toward a more offensive response doctrine, as signaled on 13 May 2025.

Policy Implications and Korea’s Role

Institutionalizing Crisis-Management Mechanisms

India and Pakistan are now applying—or loosening—their no-first-use principles in increasingly ambiguous ways, lowering the nuclear threshold under a veil of strategic uncertainty. This makes the institutionalization of crisis-management mechanisms urgent. Pakistan has publicly convened its nuclear command authority, indirectly signaling possible nuclear use; India may interpret this as justification for preemptive action. Given that both states possess substantial and expanding nuclear arsenals, concrete steps to manage the nuclear threshold are essential.

To improve nuclear crisis management in South Asia, practical measures could include: establishing a joint early-warning mechanism for military activities along the Line of Control, operating permanent emergency hotlines, and restoring informal dialogue channels on nuclear issues. In the Pahalgam crisis, despite the brief episode in which President Trump sought to present himself as mediator, it was ultimately the activation of lines between the directors of military operations—who oversee operational planning in both India and Pakistan—that allowed the situation to be stabilized.

Strengthening Rules on Nuclear Weapons and Counterterrorism

Repeated limited wars between India and Pakistan risk creating the perception that localized conflict under the shadow of nuclear deterrence is tacitly tolerated by the international community. That perception needs to be actively countered. The international community must work to ensure that nuclear-armed or nuclear-aspirant states do not treat South Asia as a precedent for carving out “safe spaces” for low-intensity provocations shielded by nuclear deterrence. Crisis-management strategies that rely on nuclear capability as a backdrop for managing localized clashes may, if miscalculated, trigger escalation and destabilize security environments in other regions, including Northeast Asia.

In addition, UN Security Council Resolution 1373 needs to be reexamined in light of persistent linkages between states and non-state actors. The pattern in which states clandestinely support terrorist organizations while evading international censure on the grounds of “no direct involvement” has reappeared in this crisis, creating a gap in the application of rules. As a non-permanent member of the Security Council, South Korea is well placed to help review the fair implementation of existing resolutions, assess the effectiveness of sanctions, and contribute to updating multilateral frameworks addressing terrorism and nuclear threats.

Redesigning the International Crisis Management Model

The Pahalgam crisis underscored the structural weaknesses of existing mediation frameworks. International responses were triggered only after military clashes had already erupted; no preventive crisis-management mechanisms were activated in advance. In an environment where there are few trusted states or institutions capable of mediation, the ad hoc coordination between the United States and China and the militaries of India and Pakistan is instructive but insufficient.

This reality points to the need for designing a more robust international coordination mechanism or multilateral crisis-management platform for South Asian disputes. At present, the international community is increasingly reluctant to intervene, partly because confidence-building mechanisms have eroded and concerns over nuclear proliferation are growing, and partly due to fatigue with recurring crises featuring a shortage of mediators, a vacuum in middle-power roles, and repeated cycles of nuclear deterrence, localized conflict, and diplomatic de-escalation.

If the chain reaction—terrorist attacks, state responses, retaliation, and subsequent diplomatic management—becomes further institutionalized as a structural pattern, the failures in crisis management observed in Pahalgam could have wider negative repercussions for global security governance. In this regard, it is worth exploring whether the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)—the only regional body that includes both India and Pakistan—can be used as a platform to discuss intra-regional crisis-management arrangements, however limited at the outset.

Korea’s Strategic Response

India’s effort to frame its response to terrorism as internationally legitimate creates an opening for South Korea to emphasize its own exposure to similar security threats and to build a more substantive sense of common ground that goes beyond symbolic gestures. As U.S.–China strategic competition intensifies, India’s geopolitical and geoeconomic weight will inevitably grow, and South Korea will need to upgrade its relationship with India into a more structured and organic strategic partnership.

South Korea and India concluded a “Special Strategic Partnership” in 2015, but the arrangement remains more limited than India’s “Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership” or “Privileged Strategic Partnership” with the United States, Russia, France, and Japan. Seoul should therefore aim to elevate bilateral ties to a more advanced strategic partnership by institutionalizing high-level strategic dialogues, setting joint agendas in core areas such as security, digital governance, and supply chains, and strengthening coordination on global governance issues. From a medium- to long-term perspective, South Korea should position itself as one of India’s key strategic partners.

At the same time, India is increasingly pursuing a pragmatic strategic line and asserting independent positions on international issues. South Korea must approach India with maximum flexibility and pragmatism while fully respecting New Delhi’s strategic autonomy. Rather than rejecting the Western-centered order outright, India presents itself as a state that supplements and reforms that order from within, and it is likely to further consolidate its strategic autonomy by articulating independent positions and making decisions guided by its own national interests.

Conclusion: Enduring Structural Tensions and Emerging Challenges

The structural complexity of the India–Pakistan conflict, reaffirmed by the Pahalgam terrorist attack, extends far beyond a bilateral dispute. It encapsulates the multidimensional challenges of the twenty-first-century security environment. Here, religious identity and state-building narratives, domestic political incentives and strategic calculations, nuclear deterrence logic and routinized low-intensity conflict, and the regional projection of U.S.–China rivalry are tightly interwoven. The result is a new kind of security dilemma that is difficult to address through traditional diplomacy and international law alone.

The repeated occurrence of limited wars between nuclear-armed states, the gradual erosion of the nuclear threshold, the weakening of the mediating capacity of international organizations, and the way technological advances are transforming armed conflict and increasing the risk of miscalculation all have implications far beyond South Asia. The India–Pakistan case vividly illustrates how the security challenges that emerged after the Cold War are now testing the resilience of the existing international order and its normative frameworks.

South Korea and the broader international community face the urgent task of devising creative and effective mechanisms that go beyond conventional approaches to manage such complex crises. Institutionalizing crisis management, strengthening rules on nuclear weapons and terrorism, designing new mediation platforms, and, above all, seeking structural solutions to break the vicious cycle between political risk and security threats have become essential priorities.

The warning from Pahalgam is clear: when structural conflicts are left unmanaged, they can generate shocks that reverberate far beyond any one region, inflicting potentially irreversible damage on the global security order.​