Introduction
When India, in May 2025, decided to launch missile strikes on Pakistan’s air bases, did it show strength or take a reckless gamble in one of the world’s most volatile regions? It was a response to a savage assault in Kashmir the previous month in which 26 civilians were killed, and India’s swift retaliatory strike, “Operation Sindoor.” The offensive was officially presented as an effort to eliminate preceived cross-border threats, but its effects are much further reaching than the battlefied.
India’s military messaging, ramped up in the name of a nationalistic fervor and fueled by multibillion-dollar defense acquisitions, poses an urgent question about the fragile stability in South Asia. While the United States threads a needle between its strategic partnership with India and managing tensions with Pakistan, the region seems mired in an escalation spiral.
The aggression is rooted deep into the country and crafted by more dangerous geopolitical dynamics; in this blog, we peek between the seams and ask what drive to reckon with and what flaws to overcome in India’s aggressive impulse. With an incisive lens, which examines unbalanced of power, we look at what is propelling India’s jingoism, Pakistan’s No cornered responses, U.S. deception, and the way out to avert disaster.
India’s Aggressive Posturing
From Kargil to Balakot
India’s recent military strikes are not unprecedented, but part of a playbook of escalations. The 1999 Kargil War solidified its position as a militarily assertive yet defensive force. 2019 saw pre-emptive retaliation with Balakot airstrikes believed to have targeted terror camps in Pakistan. Operation Sindoor is just the latest phase in this patchwork, an attempt to show the world that India is a power in its own right, capable of serving its needs without any outside help.
Kashmir as an Eternal Casus Belli
A closer look reveals that it is the issue of Kashmir that is central to the escalations. India’s 2025 military boasting directly related to the region, where the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 ended Kashmir’s constitutional autonomy. The April 2025 attack showed the perils of mixing disgruntlement with militarized nationalism. But India’s strikes did little to address the sources of unrest; they were about theater more than substance.
Modernizing an Arsenal
India’s defence spending, which has been increasing exponentially since 2019, indicates that there is an idea behind taking the defence capability to a global scale. It is filled with high-end weaponry sourced from both Western and domestically produced arms deals. But modern arms count for little against an adversary with its own standing nuclear arsenal, and so India is walking a jagged line between deterrence and provocation.
Pakistan’s Cornered Response
Retaliation Under Pressure
As India flexes its muscles, Pakistan’s defensive stance only grows more untenable. Pakistan reacted to Indian strikes with drone and missile attacks on Indian airfields. These moves were the latest in its own messaging of defiance.
The Nuclear Shadow
Underneath that tit for tat is a much larger danger. Some of the Indian maneuvers bypassed regions close to the Pakistani nuclear control, sparking fears of a nuclear brinkmanship situation. And U.S. intelligence had warned that such moves could lead to an existential crisis for the region. Pakistan’s slender strategic depth makes any frontal assault a near existence threat — conducive to risks of a military miscalculation.
Growing Reliance on China
Further complicating that theater is Pakistan’s closer dependence on China for military aid, which includes advanced J-10 fighter jets and precision technology. Chinese participation dramatically changes the calculation, both as a disincentive to Indian escalation, and as a complicating factor in U.S. attempts to mediate.
The U.S. Balancing Act
Strategic Partnerships or Hypocrisy?
The United States, which has worked to discourage escalation after India’s strikes, remains inconsistent in its South Asia policy. On the one hand, its partnership with India in the Indo-Pacific is indispensable to checking Chinese power. If it does, on the other hand, it cannot afford to utterly lose Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state where Beijing has significant influence.
This double-dealing diplomacy robs Washington of its neutral broker status. U.S. backing for India’s narrative gives it a blank check to continue with its aggression, and Pakistan views these actions as unadulterated bias rather than with a grain of salt, adding fuel to regional instability.
Failing to Act Early
By the time the U.S. brokered a ceasefire in May 2025 the damage was done. Delhi and Islamabad had already acted out their perilous signaling games, with hundreds already dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. These developments would have been preventable if the opposition to India’s military activities after 2024 had been more vigorous from the outset.
De-escalation Over Disaster
India’s Role in Dialogue
India has a responsibility to de-escalate for its own security and for regional stability. Military training exercises, coercive operations such as Operation Sindoor, and more cold-shouldering of Kashmiri sentiments will be at great cost. It will have to come back to the table of negotiations with Pakistan and with Kashmiri leaders and work out a sustainable solution.
The U.S. Must Mediate More Responsibly
We in the United States do not have the luxury of limiting our role to postcrisis cleanup. By supporting continued confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan, and acknowledging its own double standards, Washington has the potential to act more as an honest broker and stabilize the region.
Centering Kashmiri Lives
Lost in all this is the fact that the lives of Kashmiris are being neglected. Retaliation, military signaling and international diplomacy, all, all bring Kashmir down to a pawn. India and Pakistan both owe the region not only avoiding war, but the cause of justice, autonomy and human dignity.
Wisdom Over Weapons of War
India’s missile strikes in 2025 amount to much more than a show of force, but rather represent the brinkmanship underlying an out-of-control game of military one-upmanship in South Asia. Whether the nuclear shadow, the fragility of U.S. diplomacy or the pain of the Kashmiris, these are all reminders of the catastrophic consequences of unhedged aggression.
We need the courage not the strength; the dialogue not the aggression, to move the way forward. What remains is to be seen is whether or not the political will can come into being to see us to peace, not merely posturing, and forestall what could otherwise be a world-sized disaster. Will India’s passionate nationalism heed the reasoned call before it sets out to stifle millions on its march?