The May 2025 India-Pakistan Conflict Neither Quite the Same Nor Quite Another

Frédéric Grare

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Frédéric Grare examines the norms that were broken during the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict. He assesses the implications for the India-Pakistan relationship as well as the roles of the United States and China in South Asia.

On May 10, 2025, following four days of intense fighting, India and Pakistan accepted a ceasefire, putting an end to what had been the greatest military escalation between the two countries in decades. Initially broken within a matter of hours, the ensuing uneasy truce remains in effect at the time of writing.

As the fog of war gradually dissipates, the battle of narratives continues unabated. What is the significance of a conflict that paradoxically is very familiar yet, by comparison with previous India-Pakistan wars, relatively out of the norm? 

The conflict was still constrained by the nuclear factor, but the limits were no longer geographic. It also mobilized a set of new, cheaper, and perhaps more destabilizing weapons. Two major diplomatic documents, the Indus Water Treaty and the Simla Agreement,[1] signed respectively in 1960 and 1972, were suspended—if not de facto abrogated—and the conflict ushered in a new military doctrine on the Indian side. 

With crisis after crisis, though, relations between India and Pakistan are going nowhere. The latter’s behavior is unlikely to sustainably change in the foreseeable future.

This commentary will examine the norms that were broken during the conflict and assess the implications for the India-Pakistan relationship as well as the roles of the United States and China in South Asia.

A Conflict Out of Norms

The four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan from May 7 to 10 broke norms in more than one way. Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attacks had in the past led to retaliations limited to Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In response to a terrorist attack on April 22 in India-administered Kashmir that India alleges was sponsored by Pakistan, the Indian Air Force conducted airstrikes not only in Pakistan-administered Kashmir but also in Pakistani Punjab. The latter area is the heartland of Pakistan’s army and the country’s economic, political, and strategic center of gravity.