From Pulwama to Pahalgam

There is an emerging tendency in Indian strategic discourse to interpret the period from the 2019 Pulwama attack to the 2025 Pahalgam incident as evidence of a "new strategic normal" in South Asia. The argument suggests that India has altered deterrence dynamics, imposed calibrated costs on Pakistan, and reshaped the regional balance through a combination of limited military strikes, sustained diplomatic pressure, and internal restructuring in Jammu and Kashmir.

But from a Pakistani perspective - and increasingly even from within serious strategic scholarship - this narrative does not hold up. What has actually emerged over the last several years is not a transformed regional order, but a crisis cycle, where escalation substitutes for strategy and messaging replaces resolution.

At the centre of this shift is what is often described as the Modi-era doctrine, associated with Narendra Modi. It rests on a simple assumption: that military force, diplomatic pressure and domestic narrative control can together coerce Pakistan into compliance while reshaping Kashmir internally. The problem is not ambition - it is the gap between ambition and outcome.

That gap became visible almost immediately after Pulwama. India's 2019 airstrikes in Balakot were projected as proof that geography no longer constrained retaliation and that a "new normal" had arrived. Yet the strategic literature that followed was far more cautious.

Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment has argued that limited military strikes rarely generate lasting coercive effect in nuclear environments, because adversaries adapt rather than capitulate. Similarly, Indian strategic analyst Sumit Ganguly has warned that such exchanges increase the risk of miscalculation rather than delivering control. Even within India, Pravin Sawhney has described Balakot as exposing a deeper problem: the widening gap between political messaging and operational military reality.

In simple terms, Balakot did not establish dominance. It established managed escalation, where both sides signalled strength but neither achieved strategic breakthrough.

That pattern becomes even clearer when viewed alongside developments in Kashmir after the revocation of Article 370 in 2019. The decision was meant to permanently settle the constitutional question of Jammu and Kashmir and integrate it fully into India's federal structure. Instead, it has produced a more complicated reality on the ground.

Indian political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta has long cautioned that coercion cannot be mistaken for normalcy. What appears as stability under heavy security presence often masks unresolved political tension. Journalistic reporting by Aakar Patel and Barkha Dutt has similarly pointed to the gap between official claims of integration and persistent alienation within the Valley.

The shift of unrest towards areas like Pahalgam only reinforces this point. It suggests not resolution, but episode of a continuing dispute - one that has been contained, not settled.

Alongside this internal strategy, India has pursued a sustained effort to diplomatically isolate Pakistan. This has included pressure in multilateral forums, financial scrutiny mechanisms, and narrative framing of Pakistan as a source of regional instability. Yet here too, outcomes have fallen short of expectations.

Pakistan's exit from the FATF grey list in 2022, along with its continued engagement in global diplomacy, reflects the limits of this approach. As Indian journalist Shekhar Gupta has noted, complete diplomatic isolation of Pakistan is far more difficult in practice than in political rhetoric. Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center similarly observes that Pakistan continues to function as a relevant regional actor, particularly in situations where larger powers require diplomatic intermediaries.

Then came Pahalgam in 2025 - and with it, a familiar script. Immediate attribution, rapid escalation, military response under Operation Sindoor, and then de-escalation through external channels. India again framed its actions as part of an evolved "new normal". But the outcome, once more, was strategically inconclusive.

External assessments of the 2025 India-Pakistan confrontation suggest that while both states demonstrated capability, neither altered the underlying deterrence balance. Former Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao has perhaps captured it most accurately, describing the region as locked in a condition of "suspended hostility" - neither peace nor war, but something more unstable: managed tension without resolution.

There is also a domestic dimension that cannot be ignored. Former Indian naval officer C Uday Bhaskar points out that India's military actions after a crisis are often influenced by politics at home. In these situations, strength is judged not only by military strategy but also by how it looks to the public. This means that international crises are used in domestic political messaging, which leaves less room for careful restraint and creates more pressure to respond in a tough and sometimes escalatory way.

Seen together, these patterns point to a consistent reality.

Pakistan has not been isolated despite sustained diplomatic pressure.

India has not achieved escalation dominance despite repeated demonstrations of force.

And Kashmir remains unresolved despite major constitutional and security interventions.

What has emerged instead is a cycle of coercion without closure - a pattern where each crisis produces movement, but not resolution; signalling, but not stability.

The deeper issue, then, is not tactical failure but strategic limitation. Coercion can shape behaviour in moments, but it cannot resolve entrenched political disputes in a nuclearised environment where both sides retain credible deterrence.

South Asia today is not moving toward change through force or pressure. Instead, it is settling into a steady pattern of controlled instability - where crises are absorbed, stories are amplified, and outcomes are kept within limits.

Unless this deeper reality is recognised, the region will keep moving from one crisis to the next - from Pulwama to Pahalgam, and then to whatever follows - without ever breaking free from the cycle that now defines it.