India and Pakistan have seen this before: The terrorist attacks killed have led to a series of escalating tit-tat measures that have put South Asia on the brink of a total war. Then there is a downgrade.

The broad outline of this pattern has played a role in the recent crisis, with the latest step being the announcement of a ceasefire in May. 10, 2025.

But in another important way, the outbreak began on April 22, with a fatal attack in India-controlled Kashmir, where 26 people were killed, representing a major departure from the past. It involves the first direct use of advanced missile systems and advanced missile systems and drones of two nuclear competitors.

As a scholar of nuclear competition, especially between India and Pakistan, I have been concerned that the erosion of international sovereign norms has reduced the U.S. interest and influence in the region and the inventory of advanced military and digital technologies has significantly increased the risk of rapid and uncontrollable escalation among the triggers of South Asia.

These changes are consistent with the domestic political transformations between the two countries. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has intensified public tensions in the country. Meanwhile, General Syed Asim Munir, the powerful army chief of Pakistan, accepted the "two-state theory" which argued that Pakistan was home to Muslims and Indian Hindus on the subcontinent.

This religious framework is even seen in the naming of military operations in both countries. For India, it is “Operation Sindoor” – mentioning the red vermilion used by married Hindu women and nodding provocatively to the widow attacked by Kashmir; Pakistan calls its counter-operation “Bunyan-Un-Marsoos,” an Arabic phrase in the Quran meaning “solid structure.”

Washington's role

India-Pakistan competition has already killed thousands of lives in many wars in 1947-48, 1965 and 1971. But since the late 1990s, whenever India and Pakistan approached the brink of war, the familiar degradation script had emerged: a familiar degradation script unfolded: a strong diplomatic institution, often dominated by the United States, would help the United States weaken American leadership.

In 1999, the direct mediation of President Bill Clinton ended the Kagill conflict, a limited war triggered by Pakistani forces that spanned India-managed Kashmir, who urged Pakistan to withdraw its troops.

Similarly, after an attack on the Indian parliament within the Indian parliament in 2001, allegedly linked to Pakistani groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, U.S. Deputy State Secretary Richard Armitage engaged in a strong shuttle diplomacy between Islamabad and New Delhi.

In the wake of the 2008 Mumbai attack, the attacks took place 166 people killed by terrorists related to Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. Rapid and advanced U.S. diplomatic involvement helped curb India’s response and reduced the risk of escalating conflict.

Just in 2019, during the Balakot crisis (an subsequent suicide bomb attack in Pulwama, Kashmir, killing 40 Indian security personnel), it was the U.S. diplomatic pressure that helped curb hostilities. "I don't think the world knows how close the Indian-Pakistan competition is to spill over into the nuclear fire in February 2019," former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later wrote in his memoir.

Diplomatic gap?

Washington makes sense as a peacemaker: it has influence and vested interests.

During the Cold War, the United States established a close alliance with Pakistan to resist India's ties with the Soviet Union. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States poured tens of thousands of dollars in military aid to Pakistan as a frontline partner in the "war on terrorism."

At the same time, since the early 2000s, the United States began to cultivate India as a strategic partner.

The stable Pakistan is an important partner of the United States in the Afghanistan war. Friendly India is a strategic balance for China. This has enabled the United States to act as an effective mediator in times of the India-Pakistan crisis.

Today, however, U.S. diplomatic concerns have shifted significantly from South Asia. The process began with the end of the Cold War, but accelerated sharply after the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021. Recently, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have consumed Washington's diplomatic efforts.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the United States has not appointed ambassadors in New Delhi or Islamabad, nor has it confirmed Assistant Secretary of State for Southern and Central Asia Affairs, which must hinder any mediation role in the United States.

Trump said the May 10 ceasefire was followed by “a long U.S.-mediated night,” but the statements from India or Pakistan seem to downplay U.S. participation, instead focusing on the direct bilateral nature of the negotiations.

If it has reduced Washington’s role as a mediator between Pakistan and India, it is not immediately obvious if anyone will fill whom, then who will fill whom. China has been trying to develop the role of mediator elsewhere, and has not been regarded as a neutral mediator due to its close alliance with Pakistan and past border conflicts with India. Other regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia have tried to intervene in the recent crisis, but both lack the power influence of the United States or China.

Of course, the absence of external mediation is not a problem in itself. Historically, foreign intervention – especially U.S. support for Pakistan during the Cold War – often complex dynamics in South Asia by creating military imbalances and strengthening hardline stances. But the past showed external pressure – especially from Washington, which may be effective.

Break the norm

Recent escalations are unfolding against the backdrop of another dynamic: the erosion of international norms since the end of the Cold War and the acceleration after 2001.

The US's "war on terror" fundamentally challenged international legal frameworks, such as practices targeting sovereign states, targeted drone killings and "enhanced interrogation technology", which many legal scholars classify as torture.

Recently, Israel’s actions in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria have caused widespread criticism for violating international humanitarian law, but have resulted in limited consequences.

In short, geopolitical norms have been eliminated, and military operations once considered as red lines have little responsibility.

For India and Pakistan, this environment creates both opportunities and risks. Both can point to actions elsewhere to justify the confident actions they have taken that will have been seen as a step too far in the past few years, such as attacks on places of worship and sovereignty violations.

Multi-domain warfare

But I think the real latest crises and the latest crises in the past are its multi-domain nature. The conflict is no longer limited to traditional military exchanges along control routes, just like the first fifty years of the Kashmir issue.

The two countries respect the control route to a large extent, and until the 2019 crisis is the de facto border of military operations. They have been a dangerous advance ever since: first cross-border air strikes into each other's territory, now clashing, spanning traditional military, network and information, while leaping across.

The report shows that the Chinese-made Pakistani J-10 fighter jet shot down several Indian aircraft, including the advanced French Rafale aircraft. This confrontation between Chinese weapons and Western weapons represents not only a bilateral conflict, but also a proxy test of competitors’ global military technology – adding another layer of strong competition in the crisis.

Furthermore, the use of swimming drones designed to attack radar systems represents a significant escalation of the technical complexity of cross-border attacks.

Conflict has also greatly expanded to the Internet field. Pakistani hackers claiming to be "Pakistan Cyber ​​Force" reported that they violated several Indian defense agencies and could damage personnel data and login certificates.

Meanwhile, Indian social media and new right-wing media have become key battlefields. India’s super-large voices have caused violence against Muslims and Kashmiris; in Pakistan, anti-Indian rhetoric has similarly intensified online.

Cool sounds prevail...now

These shifts create multiple escalation pathways, and traditional crisis management approaches are not designed to be addressed.

Especially the nuclear dimension. Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine is that if the presence of a nuclear weapon is threatened, it will use nuclear weapons and has developed short-term tactical nuclear weapons designed to deal with India’s conventional advantages. Meanwhile, India informally redirected its historic useless position, thus ambiguating its operating doctrine.

Thankfully, as the ceasefire announcement shows, the voices of the intermediary seem to have prevailed this time. However, I think that eroding norms reduces the emergence of strong regime diplomacy and multi-domain wars, which makes this latest outbreak a dangerous turning point.

What happens next will tell us about how nuclear competitors manage or cannot manage this dangerous new landscape conflict.