Crossing international borders is not a small thing. And militarily crossing the border of a nuclear state is fraught with danger of unimaginable proportions. What prompted Indian policymakers to launch military strikes across the international border into Pakistani territory on May 7, 2025? Was it because the Indian state had reached a saturation point in its endurance of alleged Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, as it had been claimed by Indian commentators, policymakers, and analysts? Was it because India’s Hindu fundamentalist ruling party and extremist Prime Minister wanted to exploit anti-Pakistani feelings in Northern India to consolidate Hindu vote banks? Should we locate the factors behind Indian decisions within Hindutva-dominated India’s national political culture? Or should we try to find the answers in a regional and international security environment? In the last two years, multiple states and non-state actors have launched military strikes across international borders into territories of states that are in possession of nuclear weapons.
For instance, Ukraine launched military strikes against Russia, a nuclear weapons state. HAMAS launched military strikes against Israel, which, though, is not a declared nuclear weapons state, but its nuclear status is an open secret. Can we say that Indians drew their own lessons from the international situation where the taboo against the use of force against nuclear states is fast eroding? Any analyst trying to find an answer to the original question cannot ignore any of these factors. However, we must realise that searching for factors behind the Indian decision to cross international borders outside Pakistan’s own security and political situation apparently would be very satisfying for policy makers of Pakistan--it would give them a source of solace and perhaps a sense of complacency.
For example, if we say that Indian society’s war hysteria fed the extremist mindset of India’s ruling party, which in turn led Prime Minister Modi to take this extreme step, which could end in a nuclear exchange. This line of thinking would not allow us to indulge in self-introspection. We won’t be able to find answers to the question: what prompted Indians to take this risk? After all, since 1987--when Pakistanis first dropped hints about their possession of nuclear weapons--till the fateful night of May 7, 2025, Indians never dared to cross the international border in any meaningful way. Did Pakistan appear too weak internally, fighting their own battles on home turf? Did Pakistani society appear too fractured to the outsiders, especially Indians? Was it because the legitimacy of state institutions and state machinery started to erode too hurriedly during the past four years? Was it because Pakistan’s international image appeared to be too tarnished, militarily weak, economically bankrupt, and politically unstable?
The period between 2001 and 2019 -20 was the period when our whole structure was busy serving American interests in the region, and yet American media and key American officials were badly targeting Pakistan as an accomplice of regional terrorist organisations
I think if we go deeply into Indian thinking in the months immediately preceding the military strikes, we will find two factors or two elements that define Indian political elites’ thinking about Pakistan and its society. Firstly, Indians thought that Pakistan was imploding from within, and the primary sign of this, in their opinion, is the anti-military political campaigns that our society witnessed during the past 8 years. They thought that the Pakistan military had lost all legitimacy and public support, even in its stronghold, the Central Punjab. The results of the 2024 parliamentary elections confirmed outsiders' predictions that Pakistani society and Pakistani military are moving in different directions, when the party with a deeply anti-military election message emerged as the single largest party.
Indians never thought their crossing of international borders would act as a magic wand for the military, and make them heroes overnight. The Pakistani nation presented a united front. The legitimacy of the state and its institutions returned overnight. The Pakistani nation saw the Pakistani military putting up a valiant and collective defense of the society, and they responded instantly--In the streets and bazaars, Pakistani people were saying hurrah to the military men in uniform. This was in total contrast with the petty political task the military has been performing during the last eight years, and in which they became party to political conflicts. Between midnight May 7 and late afternoon May 10, the military just won the hearts of the Pakistani people by doing something that was for everybody.
The public opinion as it is reflected in our media and social media, is a product of our chattering classes of Pakistani society and the prattling of media men. When I talk about the public opinion turning decisively in favor of the military after the May 7 strikes, I don’t intend to cite the prattling of chattering classes and overly talkative state machinery and media men. I have my own way of gauging public opinion. I talk to people in the remote parts of Pakistan where the influence of electronic media is minimal. I talk to laborers, I talk to street vendors, petty businessmen, housewives, working ladies, traders, butchers, cobblers and queers of society. I talk to men on the street who are away from the camera effects that our society, at present, seems to be living under. I warn all political adventurers not to get in the way of General Asim Munir.
The second factor, which convinced Indians that Pakistan is a fair game, was Pakistan’s badly tarnished international image. Sometimes people and states fall victim to their own propaganda. This is what happened with the Indians. The Indians have been campaigning in the international political arena against Pakistan as a state sponsoring terrorism and exuding religious extremism since 1993. The time of the latest military strikes against Pakistani territory was also the time when Indian foreign policy reached the wrong conclusion that their decades-old efforts had attained maturity, and it was time to strike. Our alliance with the United States in the war against terrorism played no small part in tarnishing Pakistan’s image at the global level.
The period between 2001 and 2019 -20 was the period when our whole structure was busy serving American interests in the region, and yet American media and key American officials were badly targeting Pakistan as an accomplice of regional terrorist organisations. This led to the building of the Pakistani state’s image as an extremely weak structure-- as they appear to be in alliance with a superpower whose central military and political leaders were striking at the very roots of the international credibility of the Pakistani state. Pakistani media misinterprets this situation of world capitals perceiving Pakistan as an extremely weak and confused state as a situation of isolation in the international community.
The problem is that the information that we have about the four days of conflict is very sketchy, and most of the time it was coming from the Public Relations Departments of two military establishments
During military rule, we had, in fact, surrendered and conceded our rights to engage in independent diplomacy to our foreign masters. Our foreign policy was subservient to Washington’s interests in the region as well as at the global level. Indians again misread Pakistan’s situation. They thought Pakistan’s perceived isolation would serve their interests in launching a diplomatic offensive against Pakistan after the May 7 military strikes. To the contrary, Pakistan’s traditional friends like China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran stood by it like rocks.
Pakistan’s diplomatic stasis gave way to hyperactivity. It was India that appeared isolated in the days following the May 7 strikes. Nur Khan Air base attack, in the heart of Pakistan’s military establishment, which India perceived as an act of gallantry by their military, badly damaged India at the diplomatic level, not least because the world perceived this attack to be too close to Pakistan’s nuclear command center. On the other hand, all Pakistani ballistic missiles struck hundreds of miles away from the heartland of India’s military and political center.
These surface-to-surface ballistic missiles or cruise missiles mounted with conventional payloads were likely to cause minimal damage-- anyone with basic knowledge of missiles and conventional payloads would know that the damage they could cause would not be more than a fighter aircraft sortie. Therefore, Prime Minister Modi’s boast that they have struck the heart of Pakistan means either that he is too naive in military terms or that he has been fooled by his own military men into believing that they have achieved a feat. And besides, US President Trump has been very savage in reminding his old friend Modi that it was not his grandstanding that was safe, the day it was US diplomatic intervention with the threat of trade sanctions that forced Pakistan and India to a ceasefire.
The era of Pakistan’s delusional belief that its nuclear weapons alone could deter Indians from a conventional attack came to a sudden end on the night of May 7, 2025. Pakistanis have long flirted with the idea that nuclear bombs have some kind of magical powers and can ward off Indian conventional attack just as Aladdin's lamp protects him in the Arabian Nights. There were a number of warning shots during the last 38 years that could have awakened the Pakistan elite from the spell that possession of nuclear weapons cast on them. But they ignored these warning shots. For Many Pakistani military experts, what happened between May 7 and May 10 could be described as a classic case of the Indian military imposing its strategy of limited war on Pakistan--limited war below the nuclear threshold. India’s first military strikes on May 7 were limited to civilian targets. No major cities or military installations were hit on the first day. What happened in the next 48 hours, and why did India start targeting military installations? Some hit close to nuclear storage sites (according to Western media)--a claim which Pakistan denies.
Can we say nuclear deterrent is now irrelevant in Pak-India military relations? Attacks against military and civilian targets across international borders have become a new normal in South Asia, despite the fact that the two sides are still in possession of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. On the following day, on May 8, India accused Pakistan of violating its airspace by sending hundreds of military drones across the international border. India said it responded by sending military drones of its own into Pakistani airspace. This was followed by missile strikes on Pakistani air bases across Pakistan. On the morning of May 10, the Pakistan military targeted Indian military bases across Northern India along the length of the International border from Kashmir to Sir Creek. Neither side mobilised its land forces. At least neither side reported that it had.
The problem is that the information that we have about the four days of conflict is very sketchy, and most of the time it was coming from the Public Relations Departments of two military establishments. For example, we don’t know what prompted Indians to launch military strikes on Nur Khan Air base on the morning of May 8? As only a day before, they were telling the world that they were avoiding strikes on Pakistani military installations. Is the Indian accusation that on the morning of May 8, Pakistan sent hundreds of military drones into Indian airspace correct? Because the Pakistani said they neither sent drones nor hit Indian bases with ballistic missiles on May 8. Apparently, Pakistan launched surface-to-surface ballistic missiles at Indian bases on the morning of May 10, and according to Pakistani media, this was done after Indian struck Pakistani bases directly.
Restoration of the legitimacy of the state and its institutions is a bigger achievement than any other victory achieved through the destruction of India’s military hardware
If somehow we can get accurate information about what happened on the morning of May 8 and what prompted Indians to launch a direct attack on military installations inside Pakistan, we would be in a better position to comment on whether deterrence would have continued to hold in the military relations between the two countries. What prompted India to launch missile attacks against Pakistani bases? And is it correct to say that the Pakistanis launched the attacks on Indian bases after coming under attack themselves? If we believe the Pakistani version, the Indian missile strikes on Pakistan’s military bases were part of India’s seeming strategy of gradual escalation, from civilian targets to military targets. The Pakistanis simply absorbed attacks on civilian targets and responded when military targets were hit. If, on the other hand, we believe in the Indian version of the events, the Indian targeting of the military installations came as a response to tit-for-tat escalations between the two countries. In both cases, India's targeting of Nur Khan Air base was a definite escalation, which could have instilled doubts in the minds of Pakistani military planners and strategists about possible Indian intentions. After all, this is a base only a few kilometers from Pakistan Army’s General Headquarters (GHQ) and, according to western media, from Pakistan’s nuclear command center.
Smartly enough, this time, Pakistanis didn’t bring in nuclear weapons in their rhetoric relating to war. For Pakistan, this was a new situation as far as nuclear deterrence is concerned. In the days leading up to the Indian strike, Pakistan officials have been predicting that the Indians would launch military strikes any moment. But they were surprised when it came, and this forced them to change their position on nuclear deterrence. Now, instead of harping on nuclear deterrence, they were reposing their confidence in their conventional capability to deter India’s conventional attacks, as has been made clear by the recent assertion of the Foreign Office spokesman. The heydays of the Pakistani notion about a nuclear deterrent seem to have evaporated into thin air.
There is a general agreement among Pakistani thinkers that the Pakistani government intended to neutralise India’s conventional superiority with the help of nuclear weapons. Writes Moeed Yusuf in the former political Herald magazine, “Nuclear weapons were to neutralise India’s conventional military superiority and deter Indian aggression”. This was the thinking behind the Pakistani induction of tactical nukes into the country's inventory sometime in 2013. However, after the May 7 attack, there is a slight change in the rhetoric of Pakistani officials. For instance, on May 15, 2025, Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman said that Pakistan’s conventional capability is enough to deter an Indian conventional attack. “These irresponsible remarks reveal his (Narendar Modi) profound insecurity and frustration regarding Pakistan's effective defence and deterrence against Indian aggression through conventional means.
Pakistan's conventional capabilities are adequate to deter India, without the self-imposed ‘nuclear blackmail’ that New Delhi suffers,” reads a press release of the foreign office. But what exactly tactical nukes and short-range ballistic missiles like NASR could have done in the news situation after the May 7 military strikes? After all, land forces were never mobilised, and the threat primarily emanated from the air, either through fighter aircraft or through missiles of several types--surface-to-surface, surface-to-air, and cruise missiles.
There are several Western experts who believe deterrence between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War was a myth. There were several close calls during which it was not nuclear weapons that saved the world from catastrophe, but sheer luck or maybe divine intervention, if you are a religious person. Besides, Soviet-US deterrence relations could not be taken as a model for Pak-India nuclear relations for several reasons. The Soviet Union and the USA were not geographically connected to each other. US-Soviet antagonism didn’t stem from religious hostility as is the case with Pakistan and India, where religious hatred produces extremely messy relations. For Example, a Hindu extremist Minister in one of the state cabinets described the Muslim spokesperson of the Indian Army, Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, as the sister of the Pakistani military to cause embarrassment across the border. A Pakistani newscaster of one of the leading channels had to cut off live transmission several times in order to prevent abusive language uttered by common people of Lahore against Hindus in the heat of the moment. This kind of hatred was seldom on display in US-Soviet relations during the Cold War. The lesson is that military confrontation or conflict is manageable, but religious conflict is not. And military conflict assumes a religious character; the combination could prove to be too lethal. Add to this mix the nuclear weapons, and the disaster could be beyond humanity's management or control.
The destruction of an enemy's military hardware is considered a great achievement in military conflicts. And the Pakistani military is rightfully boastful of its achievements in this regard. But I think the May 7 military strikes have done something much bigger for the Pakistani state and society. Restoration of the legitimacy of the state and its institutions is a bigger achievement than any other victory achieved through the destruction of India’s military hardware. I am convinced--after a careful analysis of Indian internal debates and political discourse-- that Indians saw the deep cleavage that emerged some 8 years back between Punjab-centric political groups and the military as an opening for them to strike. They thought that military bashing that Pakistanis have become fond of would continue or may speed up after the military strikes. This didn’t happen--instead, military men became heroes overnight. Pakistani people overwhelmingly came out in enthusiastic support of the military.
If I am allowed to speculate a little, I would say this prevented the Indians from expanding their war aims. So, more than the destruction of military hardware, it is the unity that the Indian military strikes generated that should be celebrated. On the other hand, it is very naive on the part of Indian military and civil officials to boast about the destruction caused by their military strikes. Look what you have lost--overwhelming international support in your so-called efforts against terror groups. It appears the world abhors a major conflict between Pak-India--even if it doesn’t turn nuclear--more than terrorism.
Now India doesn’t have a clear road map to counter terrorism, and even if it does have one, the world opinion will remain divided on how India should treat the menace. Pakistan is more clearly in the protective embrace of its traditional friends. I am sure Pakistanis now would not mind if India is not ready for formal talks. Can you call a country isolated if it is surrounded in a protective embrace of five strong and powerful friendly states? Perhaps India misread its importance in the international system of states. Perhaps it is too early for India to start behaving as a world power, even as a regional power. Advice for Indians: Military strategy has never been your forte, historically speaking. You are only good at producing feature movies; restrict yourself to that business, please.