In his address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee of Pakistan warned of the risks of conflict in South Asia. In particular he made references to the Kashmir dispute, and labelled stoppage of Indus River water by India as an “acts of war” and an “existential threat”. General Mirza also warned that the “threshold for war between India and Pakistan has dangerously lowered”. He also alluded to the “nuclearisation” in the sub-continent which necessitates robust “functional communication channels” to defuse tensions.

Meanwhile General Anil Chauhan, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, who also attended the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, dismissed over exaggerated fears about nuclear escalation between India and Pakistan noting that “We had clear escalation management protocols, and multiple steps before even approaching the nuclear red line.” He clarified that there is “significant space between conventional military operations and the nuclear threshold,”

Earlier, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, had dismissed President Donald Trump’s assertion that “we [US] stopped the nuclear conflict. I think it could have been a bad nuclear war. Millions of people could have been killed, so I’m very proud of that”. The Indian spokesperson emphasised that “military action was entirely in the conventional domain. There were some reports that Pakistan’s National Command Authority would meet on May 10, but this was later denied by them,”

Even the Pakistani side clarified that the escalatory military response was in the form of tit-for-tat strikes, and that they were “very sure that our [Pakistan] conventional capacity and capabilities are strong enough that we will beat them both in air and on ground” clearly suggesting that “nuclear option was never on the table”.

Notwithstanding that, Indian Defence Monster Rajnath Singh has pointed to Pakistan’s nuclear threat against India. Singh has called upon the global community to pay heed to the irresponsible behaviour of Pakistan to have “threatened India with its nuclear weapons”. Further, he has questioned : “Are nuclear weapons safe in the hands of such a rogue nation? , and suggested that “Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal must be placed under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

There is a history with regard to nuclear blackmail by Pakistan and this choice by Islamabad needs to understood and requires response. As early as 1969, former Z.A. Bhutto had warned that in case the Pakistan government “ restricts or suspends her nuclear programme, it would not only enable India to blackmail Pakistan with her nuclear advantage, but would impose a crippling limitation on the development of Pakistan’s science and technology.” After its nuclear test in1998, Islamabad was convinced that it has acquired military parity despite a “massive disparity in conventional military capabilities”.

It has been argued that “Pakistani leaders have always tried to make a convincing case to justify nuclear weapons as the only means available to “preserve a broad strategic equilibrium with India, to neutralize Indian nuclear threats or blackmail, and to counter India’s large conventional forces”. Therefore it is not surprising that “the Pakistani nuclear doctrine encapsulates a more offensive form of deterrence that seeks to change the status quo by holding out the threat of nuclear blackmail on Kashmir while deterring an Indian conventional attack.”

their favour, the larger Pakistani strategy appears to be to continue to bleed India while not provoking it enough to escalate to a point where any kind of decisive Indian action wrests the control of escalation from Pakistan”.

Islamabad is surely emboldened by its choice of “nuclear blackmail” and it is their belief that India will be deterred. It is not surprising then that in the last 25 years Pakistan has used terrorism as a tool of its foreign policy to settle the Kashmir issue with “nuclear blackmail” as a shield. It is fair to suggest that Operation Sindoor may have, in some ways, ‘put to test as also put to rest’ Pakistan’s nuclear black mail!

Dr. Vijay Sakhuja is Professor and Head, Center of Excellence for Geopolitics and International Studies (CEGIS), REVA University, Bengaluru and is associated with Kalinga International Foundation, New Delhi.