Two Nuclear Powers Walked Back From the Brink of War. Here’s What Everyone Is Missing

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Last week, India and Pakistan appeared to be on the brink of all-out war. The neighboring countries were blasting ballistic missiles over each other’s borders, striking densely populated areas and killing dozens of civilians as thousands more fled their homes near the countries’ shared border. Family WhatsApp groups circulated messages with detailed steps on how to prepare for war. Both nations severed all diplomatic ties, and India took the unprecedented step of “suspending” one of its oldest treaties with Pakistan—suggesting it would prevent Pakistan from accessing much-needed water in the rich Indus basin.

The prospect of protracted battle between two nuclear powers alarmed global power players like China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United States, all of whom pleaded for de-escalation. Over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump suddenly announced that he’d helped to mediate a ceasefire between India and Pakistan by offering lowered U.S. tariffs to both countries. The two countries confirmed that they’d reached an agreement—though India denied any American mediation, and Pakistan subsequently unleashed drone bombs over the border city of Srinagar.

No casualties from that attack were reported, and it seems, thankfully, that the temporary peace is otherwise holding. Military leaders from Pakistan and India have engaged in talks over specific regional demands on trade and diplomacy. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, claims that this is merely a “pause” and that his nation will “retaliate on its own terms” should Pakistan disturb the peace, without fear of “nuclear blackmail.” Pakistani officials called Modi’s remarks “provocative and inflammatory” and said they represent “a dangerous escalation.” Still, Pakistan has declared that it is committed to the truce—although it’s currently warning that it may fall apart should India refuse to recommit itself to the Indus treaty.

How did we end up at the most perilous moment in Indo-Pak relations in decades—the closest they’d come to war since the late 1990s? What’s going to change going forward, and can the peace last?

The historic region of Kashmir, mostly divided between India and Pakistan via the border known as the Line of Control, has long been a flashpoint in the neighboring states’ relations. Kashmiris themselves have often sought total independence, leading to oppressive crackdowns from the Indian government; Pakistan has often provided material support to vigilante cells that desire to annex the entire area.

Tensions over control of Kashmir have continued to flare up in recent years, including military clashes at the Line of Control in 2020–21 and cross-border air strikes in 2019. However, none of it ever heightened beyond petty bluster and missile launches; the last time the two nations waged formal combat over Kashmir was in 1999 with the Kargil War, and no one (least of all Kashmiris) wanted to see a repeat of that.

Then, on April 22, a crew of five still-unidentified gunmen massacred a group of tourists who’d come to visit Pahalgam, a small town in India-controlled Jammu and Kashmir. After forcing the tourists to recite a Muslim declaration of faith, the attackers killed 24 Hindu men, a Christian tourist, and a local Muslim resident who’d attempted to protect the victims. (Women and children were spared and reportedly instructed to “go tell this to Modi.”) The Resistance Front, a regional insurgency movement spun off from local Pakistan-supported terror cells, appeared at first to claim responsibility for the murders but later denied any involvement, attributing the initial message to faulty Indian intelligence.

The perpetrators of the worst terror act in India since the 2008 Mumbai bombings have thus far evaded identification. But that hasn’t stopped India from squarely blaming the Pakistani government and retaliating accordingly. The subcontinent first responded by suspending the Indus Water Treaty and by revoking diplomatic ties with Pakistan, while Pakistan imposed new trade blockades and closed off airspace to Indian aircraft. India also ramped up military incursions into Jammu and Kashmir, imposing a lockdown in Pahalgam and killing area insurgents.

Soldiers from both countries exchanged fire along the Line of Control right after the attack and continued the fighting into May. Heads of state solicited domestic support by spreading rampant disinformation and propaganda, and Indian authorities even arrested a Kashmiri journalist for posting about the state’s plight on Facebook. Digital news outlet the Wire, which reported on that arrest, was soon blocked from view within Indian borders; it only earned reinstatement after it agreed to government demands to remove a different article about the ongoing conflict. The Indian government also ordered X to obscure thousands of accounts from Indian view, including those affiliated with anti-war activists, with the Pakistani government, or with anyone deemed to be hostile to India. (It wouldn’t be the first time.)

The greater scare came on May 7, when India launched a series of missiles into Pakistan as part of “Operation Sindoor” and claimed to have killed significant terrorist leaders. Pakistan bemoaned that the missiles had killed a couple dozen civilians and retaliated with its own missile and drone bombings, downing Indian fighter jets and targeting army bases. Civilian deaths were also reported within Jammu and Kashmir. This horrifying state of affairs continued for about three days, until the ceasefire was put into effect.

It all goes back to the bloody Partition of 1947, when the United Kingdom ceded rule of British India and divided the colony into the independent nations of India and Pakistan—the latter of which was intended as a home for the Muslim population. The sloppy land-parceling that decided the Indo-Pak boundaries fueled mass displacement and death, and also left the territorial status of border regions like Jammu and Kashmir in dispute. The Muslim-majority princely state had desired to become an autonomous region but was caught up in competing territorial claims from India and Pakistan, which waged war over Kashmiri control and ended the battle, temporarily, by splitting the land between Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

In the 1950s, India approved a semiautonomous status for Jammu and Kashmir in its national constitution, allowing the state to establish its own laws and fence off its land from outsider settlers. But it kept blocking any chances for Kashmiris to decide their own sovereignty, even though the United Nations repeatedly called for a referendum that would allow the entirety of Kashmir (including the Pakistan-administered areas) to vote on whether it wished to fully grant all its land to either Pakistan or India, or to become an independent state. Such a vote never took place, and India continued to face off with both Pakistan and an increasingly interested China over land disputes.

The festering resentments blew up by the late 1980s. Pakistan, which was also a U.S. ally at the time, supplied many of the U.S.-backed mujahedeen soldiers who helped fend off the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan with equipment, shelter, and assistance. When the Soviets withdrew in 1989, many of the mujahedeen fighters formed splinter cells, with Pakistan’s support, to launch an insurgency aimed at bringing all of Kashmir into Pakistan by force.

Other militant groups subsequently took up arms on behalf of full Kashmiri independence, and the ensuing violence was devastating for Kashmiris of all stripes. Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, some of whom had been targeted by the militants, fled their homes to resettle in the Jammu Division. The Indian government cracked down on its part of Kashmir with extreme force, detaining and torturing and disappearing thousands of local Muslims—often on an arbitrary basis with no real justification—on the pretext of purging Pakistani influence within Indian borders. (It’s worth noting that while Pakistan has indeed admitted to supporting armed militants in Kashmir, India has reportedly done the same with insurgent groups inside Pakistan.)

By the late ’90s, India and Pakistan had both conducted nuclear weapon tests and reengaged in war over the Line of Control, sparking global fears of nuclear war and inspiring then–U.S. President Bill Clinton to help de-escalate things.

To this day, Jammu and Kashmir remains India’s sole Muslim-majority territory, and the Hindu-dominated national government treats the people who live there with suspicion—imposing frequent communications blackouts long after the war was over, and flooding the place with Indian soldiers.

“India and Pakistan, to a large extent, think of Kashmir in terms of What is in my interest?” Tariq Ali, a Pakistani British historian and author of several works of South Asian history, told me in an interview. “So the actual needs and desires and demands of the Kashmiris are virtually null. No one has asked them.”

Just months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist political party cemented their power with a sweeping reelection victory in mid-2019, the government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special autonomy and reorganized the entire area, separating it into two so-called union territories (one recognized as Ladakh, the other still named Jammu and Kashmir), ramping up suppression of the local population, smothering local journalists, and allowing outsiders to buy Kashmiri land.

“Militarized governance of India-administered Kashmir is a form of coloniality where Kashmiris largely understand themselves to be under Indian occupation, living in contexts akin to collective internment,” Angana Chatterji, a scholar at UC–Berkeley and longtime advocate against India’s atrocities in Kashmir, wrote to me in an email. “Counterterrorism statutes have been growingly applied against Kashmiri critics of the Indian government—journalists, lawyers, politicians, human rights defenders.” (Hey, does that sound familiar?)

The government in Pakistan has also spurned the cause of Kashmiri autonomy, viewing the territory as its “jugular vein.” In 2022, Pakistan’s Parliament ousted the popular Prime Minister Imran Khan, who had promised he would allow Kashmiris to vote on whether they desired full independence. (His replacement, the Kashmiri-origin Shehbaz Sharif, condemned those remarks at the time.)

Last year, Modi was once again reelected as India’s PM, but his political party saw significant losses when their increasingly brazen nationalism couldn’t overcome the misery of Indians’ economic suffering. Jammu and Kashmir also held its first post-autonomy assembly elections in October, and a local anti-Modi party earned a clear victory. All of this, coupled with public appeasement of Trump’s administration, has left some small dents in Modi’s strongman image.

Still, he’s long known that he can count on Indians to support his aggression against Pakistan and hard line on Kashmir—and that’s exactly what he’s been banking on since April 22. “The economic and political breakdowns inside India, and a restlessness among the base, have certainly contributed to the Modi-led government’s aggressiveness,” Chatterji said. And as Ali put it in a recent New Left Review piece, “Kashmir remains an untouchable subject” in India, with even Modi-opposing politicians and public figures supporting the military strikes against Pakistan.

Miraculously, even after Pakistan’s attack on Srinagar, an uneasy peace seems to have held—for now. (When I asked Ali why Pakistan carried out that attack even after the ceasefire, he simply responded: “machismo.”) But that doesn’t mean things will remain calm for long.

Ordinary Indians and Pakistanis have once again been whipped up in nationalistic fervor. India’s government has censored thousands of social media accounts affiliated with Pakistan, Kashmir, or Muslims in general. It’s not the first time India has taken this kind of action against Pakistan, but it’s certainly the most sweeping, with Modi all but approving the traditional Indian outlets that have reduced themselves to war cheerleading. (Indian media is now focusing its ire on Turkey and Azerbaijan over their rhetorical support for Pakistan, and calling for a boycott of the former.)

As of now, it’s unclear what substantive arrangements will emerge from this peace. India is still refusing to abide by the Indus Water Treaty, and its denial of water supplies would be devastating for everyday Pakistanis. Modi wants to make any deal contingent on “security” in Jammu and Kashmir along with guarantees from Pakistan that will stop arming Kashmiri separatist groups.

None of this does anything to address the underlying issues, not least since there’s still no agreed-upon record as to how the tragedy in Pahalgam unfolded. “Kashmir is not going away,” Ali said. “This is not going to be sorted out by random attacks or by wars, but by coming to an agreement which guarantees Kashmiri autonomy.” However, he said, “I don’t think this is likely, because Kashmiris know what happens after a war: They are the ones who suffer.”

Indeed, Kashmiris have told media outlets that they don’t trust that the ceasefire will hold, because how can they?

“Kashmir is a pawn in a protracted and perilous wargame,” Chatterji said. “The population lives with recurrent and intergenerational psychosocial trauma and social death. For lasting peace, it is urgent that Kashmir be recognized as an equal partner in this tripartite conflict. Walking away from the brink of an unwinnable war by two nuclear states is less and less likely each time.”

But that’s sadly not likely on either end, and the possibility grows more remote by the day. Thus the Kashmiris will continue to suffer, suspicions all around will hold, and India and Pakistan will leverage any excuse they can to bear arms at each other again. The next time, we might not be so lucky. The nukes are still lying idle.

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