Previous close calls may well have been learning experiences. But it’s just as easy to conclude exactly the opposite
The latest violence isn’t the first time India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed nations, have hurled men and arms at each other. It’s not even the first time in living memory for the young soldiers and airmen who are doing the fighting. We don’t need to recap the long and tortured history of the subcontinent’s bloody division in the aftermath of the Second World War. We don’t need to talk about the second India-Pakistan War, or the third or even the fourth.
It wasn’t exactly the dawn of a new era of peace. The two sides remained dug in along the border of Kashmir, a region both claim, and continued to skirmish there regularly. But there was, at least, a sense of optimism after the 2008 war scare. Twice before, in 1999 and again in 2001, as noted above, the two sides had exchanged actual fire. Soldiers had died in battle by the hundreds.
What happens next? The good news is that neither side, we can assume, wants a war. India and Pakistan are both armed to the teeth with conventional weapons, and the contested border in Kashmir is in rugged, mountainous terrain. It wouldn’t be easy for either side to wage a war there, and any conflict would be bloody and prolonged, for limited gain. That’s assuming the best-case scenario, too.
Both sides know this and would want to avoid it. And we can hope that the fact that they’ve come close to the brink of all-out war before, in recent memory, without actually going over the edge means that they won’t; that the leadership on both sides is mature enough to avoid the kind of deliberate conventional escalation or reckless action that would lead to the ultimate disaster.
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