India’s signalling after the conflict suggested future retaliation may extend beyond militant groups to the Pakistani military itself. “Terrorists and their backers will be treated the same way,” Bisaria says, echoing the Indian government’s position.
The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty has become another marker of this harder posture.
“Blood and water can’t go together,” Bisaria says. “There is no way the treaty is coming back.”
From Pakistan’s perspective, however, the conflict appears to have reinforced faith in its own escalation strategy.
Haqqani argues the brief duration of the conflict worked to Pakistan’s advantage.
“Pakistan’s strategy has been to move rapidly up the escalation ladder so that the threat of nuclear war brings in the international community,” he says.
That belief appears widespread within Pakistan’s strategic community.
Umer Farooq, an Islamabad-based analyst and a former correspondent of Jane’s Defence Weekly, says there is growing confidence in Islamabad that Washington and Gulf capitals would intervene rapidly in any future crisis.
“In Pakistan, there is a belief that Americans have forced Pakistan and India to the negotiating table before and they can do it again,” he told the BBC.
At the same time, he says, Pakistan’s military and political elite appear acutely conscious of the country’s internal fragility.
“Our economy is in a shambles, society is deeply divided, we are facing two insurgencies,” Farooq says. “There is a mainstream thinking in the political and military elite that we should not go for any conflict with India.”
That tension – between deterrent confidence and economic vulnerability – may explain the carefully calibrated signals emerging from Rawalpindi in recent months.
