Like all India-Pakistan crises since at least 1999, the current confrontation is widely viewed as a dangerous clash between nuclear powers—yet there is little clarity about what this actually entails beyond standard expressions of alarm. Nuclear weapons have powerful effects which constrain what nations can do. They have been used twice (in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), but only when the targeted nation did not possess them. Military hostilities between nuclear-armed rivals have occurred on numerous occasions, but the risks of escalation have always restricted options on both sides. A glance at these episodes lay bare an inescapable reality: nuclear weapons prohibit a rational resort to major war, and the closer we come to crossing the nuclear threshold, the larger looms the risk of catastrophe. It makes sense, therefore, to seek less hazardous alternatives and, if the adversary simply will not negotiate in good faith, resort to options thus far not considered palatable. Since the 1990s, Indian policy has not achieved much: every crisis has brought a modicum of compromise, but not for long. There is no reason to expect anything different this time unless an out-of-the-box approach is adopted that both eschews nuclear risk and turns an asymmetric conflict into a symmetric one.
Though the fragmentation of Pakistan may produce risks for India, it is worth considering the potential strategic gains from a nuanced Indian standpoint
Let me first outline the patterns discernible in nuclear altercations over the years. Major border skirmishes broke out between China and the Soviet Union in March-September 1969; and between India and Pakistan during the Kargil crisis in March-July 1999. In the mid-1960s, during the Vietnam War, there were occasional dogfights between Chinese and American aircraft; and Chinese-manned anti-aircraft weapons deployed in the North also targeted the latter. Lower-level combat occurred between the US and the Soviet Union in 1960 and 1962 when American intelligence-gathering planes were shot down over the Soviet Union and Cuba respectively; in 1962, when American surface ships dropped practice torpedoes as warnings on Soviet submarines near Cuba (which Soviet commanders mistook for real ones); and when Indian and Pakistani land and air forces briefly clashed in 2016 and 2019. Major confrontations without actual serious combat occurred between US and Soviet forces in Berlin in 1961 and Cuba in 1962, and between India and Pakistan in 2001-02. Overall, regardless of the nature of the confrontation, both sides actually cooperated in three ways: by not crossing the threshold between limited combat and major war; by scrupulously avoiding the use of the bomb; and by negotiating overtly as well as covertly.
