Analysis: No war, but no peace either

AI Summary

The political landscape in South Asia remains tense as the relationship between Pakistan and India continues to deteriorate since their recent military conflict. With neither dialogue nor combat ongoing, the countries maintain a status quo characterized by mistrust and limited communication channels.

• Pakistan-India ties still trapped by Delhi’s intransigence, US failure to create political process after ceasefire • Islamabad’s institutional coherence shattered New Delhi’s illusions it was dealing with ‘weak neighbour’ • Water war takes centre stage as Indus treaty remains ‘unilaterally held in abeyance’ THE fighting lasted barely 90 hours, but the political consequences have proved far more durable. While neither India nor Pakistan got what they expected from the flare-up of 2025, very few could have predicted that less than a year later, it would be Pakistan that emerged as the diplomatic lynchpin in the region, while India remained relegated to the side-lines. Today, the relationship between the two neighbours remains frozen in an unusually rigid state; there is no war, but there is no diplomacy worth the name, either. The border is shut, trade is suspended and the Indus Waters Treaty remains unilaterally held in abeyance by New Delhi. Military hotlines between the two countries are functioning, but they are emergency mechanisms rather than channels of engagement. The resulting situation is not that of stability in the conventional sense, but a colder equilibrium sustained by deterrence, mistrust and the absence of political alternatives. At the time the US facilitated ceasefire was announced, there was an understanding — at least according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement — that military de-escalation would be followed by talks at a neutral venue. The US role for crisis management had been unusually visible and President Donald Trump publicly claimed credit for helping secure the ceasefire. So, there was a strong hope for a structured engagement between the two sides when the conflict ended. But that process never materialised; India quickly rejected any suggestion of external mediation and insisted that the ceasefire understanding emerged through direct communication at the level of the two directors general of military operations. It did so because New Delhi had long opposed internationalisation of the Kashmir dispute, and Trump’s public handling of the episode caused disquiet in Indian official circles. Pakistan, meanwhile, believed that the conflict had restored a measure of strategic balance and that the post-war environment would generate a diplomatic momentum leading to improvement in the relationship and some semblance of normalisation. But things did not turn out that way, mostly because Washington — after helping stop the fighting — had not invested sustained diplomatic capital in building a political framework around the ceasefire. The impression left behind was that the US could help stop wars in South Asia, but may no longer possess either the leverage or the appetite to sustain a structured peace process afterwards. India’s loss, Pakistan’s gain Indian resistance to any formal mediatory role, meanwhile, further weakened the possibility of follow up diplomacy. Besides Delhi’s refusal to accept any external mediation on the Kashmir dispute, Indian strategic thinking before May 2025 viewed Pakistan as a state weakened by internal instability, economic distress and persistent terrorist violence. Therefore, the widening asymmetry in economic size, diplomatic influence and military modernisation encouraged a belief that India no longer needed engagement with Pakistan, and could manage the relationship through pressure, coercive signalling and diplomatic isolation instead. The conflict, especially the way it ended, complicated that assumption. Pakistan, to the surprise of many, demonstrated a great degree of institutional coherence during the crisis, absorbing military pressure, maintaining escalation control and mounting a coordinated response involving drones, missiles and air power. The conflict produced a narrative that Pakistan was strategically resilient, despite its internal difficulties. Equally important, the crisis restored Pakistan’s geopolitical relevance. US engagement intensified during the conflict; China, Turkiye and Iran publicly backed Islamabad diplomatically and Gulf states quietly remained involved in de-escalation efforts. Islamabad then went on to use the post-war period to improve its diplomatic visibility, particularly as regional tensions surrounding Iran later increased international interest in Islamabad’s intermediary role. But none of this fundamentally altered the broader asymmetry between India and Pakistan. India still retains overwhelming long term advantages in economic weight and global positioning, but the conflict shattered the assumption, both in Delhi and around the world, that Pakistan had become “strategically irrelevant”. An Indian military analyst, who has a good understanding of the Modi government’s thinking on foreign policy and security matters, told Dawn, “India is still operating on the assumption that that the asymmetry continues to favour it, though some important lessons were learnt from the conflict.” Policymakers, he s