Experts believe that a significant factor preventing India and Pakistan from engaging in an all-out war

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Key Points

India launched missile strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Wednesday, killing at least 31 people.
Pakistan has denied India’s allegations of being behind the 22 April attack in Indian-administered Kashmir.
World leaders have urged the nuclear-armed neighbours to exercise restraint.

Tensions between India and Pakistan reached a boiling point as India blamed Pakistan for a militant attack in which 26 tourists were shot dead in Indian-administered Kashmir on 22 April.

On Wednesday, India launched a series of strikes on sites in Pakistan and

As the world watches the developing situation, global leaders, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and have urged the nuclear-armed neighbours to exercise restraint.

But experts say the conflict is unlikely to escalate into an all-out war because of the economic realities both countries face.

Pakistani residents gather around the debris of an unidentified missile

Residents gather around part of an unidentified military aircraft that crashed near Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir. Source: Getty / Saqib Majid

India claimed the strikes — — were in response to the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, a popular tourist town in Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead.

But Pakistan, which has denied any involvement in that attack, described the strikes as “unprovoked”, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saying the “heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished” and claiming Pakistan has responded further by shooting down five Indian aircraft.

India has denied this claim, calling it “propaganda”, and also saying pictures of aircraft wreckage doing the rounds on social media are “old” and from a crash in 2021.

Will they, won’t they?

Griffith University professor of international relations Ian Hall told SBS News that any commentary about all-out regional escalation should be measured.

“Neither side actually wants a war or an escalation beyond where we are now because neither side can really afford it and it’s in neither side’s interest,” he said.

Expanding on that, Melbourne University senior lecturer in Asian studies Dr Pradeep Taneja told SBS News that Pakistan is essentially in the midst of deep economic crisis and cannot afford war, while India is focused on expanding its economy from the world’s fifth biggest, to becoming the world’s third largest.

“India’s defence budget is at least eight times the size of Pakistan’s defence budget. So, Pakistan is not going to achieve anything by engaging in a full-scale war with India at this stage,” he said.

Hall said it’s unclear exactly how Pakistan will respond to Wednesday’s attack because the military has offered different messaging to the country’s prime minister, and jittery troops in the highly-militarised area pose a risk of further escalation.

But he said the national security advisers of both countries appear to have spoken on the phone.

“That’s a positive because they’re at least talking, so there’s probably less risk that we see things escalate beyond this point,” Hall said.

How did India and Pakistan get to this point?

Shortly after the British partitioned India and created Pakistan, the neighbouring countries went to war in October 1947 over Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region ruled by a Hindu monarch Hari Singh.

When the war ended in 1948, both newly independent nations administered portions of the region.

India and Pakistan went on to fight two full-scale wars — in 1965 and 1971 — and a limited war in 1999.

A graphic depicting a map of the disputed Kashmir region

Source: SBS News

Cross-border attacks have taken place in 2016 and 2019, but Hall says this time, they’ve been much bigger.

Since 22 April India has announced several measures to reduce its ties with Pakistan, including suspending a water access treaty and closing its only operational land border crossing.

The Indus Waters Treaty and accusations of ‘water terrorism’

Pakistan accused India of committing “water terrorism” when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that in response to the 22 April attack, India would suspend the Indus Waters Treaty, which defines how the two countries share water from common rivers, including the Indus.

Taneja said India is within its right to suspend the treaty because “conditions have changed”.

“Indian politicians over the past few years have argued that water and blood cannot flow together.”

“They say that Pakistan has benefited from this treaty but unless it takes concrete actions to control terrorist groups that operate in Pakistan’s territory and with the support of the Pakistan military, we can essentially restrict water supply to them.”

A landscape shot of a river running through a valley with a backdrop of mountains

The Indus Waters Treaty dictates how Pakistan and India share water from several major rivers including the Indus. Source: AAP / EPA

What is the risk of nuclear escalation?

Hall said Pakistan and India have “small” nuclear arsenals of around 200-300 weapons each, but they would be “a long way away” from thinking about using them.

He pointed out that both countries do not store their weapons near Kashmir and in the case of India, “it would take over a week for the military to load the weapons for attack”.

“We’re not talking about a Cold War situation where everybody was on a hair trigger and a weapon could be used within minutes,” he explained.

“The presence of nuclear weapons has actually restrained both countries — it’s changed the dynamic, and it means that it’s less likely that they would go to war on a large scale because they know that could then escalate to a nuclear exchange.”

What role could world powers play?

US President Donald Trump has said he could “help” if India and Pakistan want his involvement in brokering peace, but the US’ role in the region has shifted significantly since former president Bill Clinton helped to navigate peace in the 1990s.

“The US used to be the key military supplier of Pakistan and provided billions of dollars in aid — military and civilian — after the September 11 attacks in New York,” Taneja said.

“But over the last decade or more, we have seen the US now has a much closer relationship with India and has kind of moved away from supporting Pakistan.”

Many Indian allies, including Australia and the US, have stopped short of condemning India’s strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered territory.

Hall said that although China is a major military supplier for Pakistan, that doesn’t mean it would seek involvement in the conflict should it escalate further.

“China’s also not particularly happy with Pakistan having militant Islamists within its own borders … and China’s relationship with Pakistan is more complicated than it sometimes looks.

“There’s quite a bit of light between them, and China has said they’re not happy about India’s airstrikes, but there’s no guarantee at all that if there was a bigger conflict that China would actually support Pakistan, and in previous conflicts, it hasn’t done that.”

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