India’s little war hands Pakistan wins on multiple fronts

The recent India-Pakistan military confrontation has reshaped domestic political dynamics on both sides of the border. While the guns have fallen silent following a hastily brokered ceasefire between the nuclear powers, the political aftershocks are reverberating across the region.

Perhaps the most consequential and surprising outcome has been the unexpected reputational boon for Pakistan’s until now embattled establishment, which has managed to consolidate its position amid the crisis.

In stark contrast, New Delhi emerges diplomatically isolated and strategically diminished, having squandered an opportunity to both press its case against alleged Pakistan-abetted terrorism and advance regional hegemony on its own terms.

Before the conflict, Pakistan’s establishment was on the political back foot. Domestically, it faced growing public anger over the perceived manipulation of the February 2024 general elections.

Despite intense legal and administrative pressure, candidates backed by former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), won the most seats as independents, signalling a powerful wave of public defiance and anger.

The resulting power struggle and the formation of a strained coalition government led to widespread protests, judicial scrutiny and a media narrative increasingly critical of the country’s power brokers.

This was a rare and dangerous moment for Pakistan’s traditionally dominant institutions. For months, the establishment had been contending with the erosion of its traditional legitimacy and deepening distrust among the populace.

Then came the Pahalgam attack, a terrorist massacre of 26 innocents in Indian-administered Kashmir. New Delhi seized the opportunity, without providing conclusive evidence that the attack was Pakistan-backed, to launch a swift and escalatory response.

The Narendra Modi government’s reaction, charged with virulent rhetoric and jingoistic posturing, was intended to demonstrate a steely resolve. Heightened troop deployments, zooming air fighters and missile attacks dominated local media coverage.

Yet this approach is now viewed as too ham-fisted and lacking diplomatic finesse. Rather than isolating Pakistan and mobilizing international support for its cause, New Delhi overplayed its hand, relying too heavily on the spectacle of military action and underestimating how global actors would respond.

The Pakistani establishment, on the other hand, seized the diplomatic moment. By framing its response as defensive and measured, the Pakistan government repositioned itself as the more responsible actor in the military exchanges between the nuclear-armed powers.

Pakistan’s civil and military leadership emphasized restraint, national unity and the need for peace, while India’s actions, however justified from its own security perspective, came across to many observers as needlessly aggressive. This narrative, fanned by fears of a possible nuclear exchange, quickly gained traction across global capitals.

Diplomatically, India suddenly found itself without robust backing. The United States, the European Union and key Gulf allies issued boilerplate statements urging de-escalation from both sides that drew a false equivalence that, in effect, undermined New Delhi’s core message: that it had suffered yet another terror attack sponsored from across the border.

China, having armed Pakistan with the state-of-the-art aerial combat platforms, used the moment to underscore its calls for stability while quietly nudging Pakistan to play the role of regional stabilizer, a role Islamabad was only too happy to adopt with its made-in-China military kit.

India’s attempt to internationalize its grievances — through backchannel diplomacy and strategic media briefings — failed to gain expected traction. Instead of Pakistan being cornered, it was India that appeared diplomatically isolated.

The post-attack narrative had shifted from terrorism to regional tensions. Rather than global condemnation of the militancy at Pahalgam, the prevailing international concern became regional escalation in a nuclear dyad. That shift marked a significant strategic loss for New Delhi.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the crisis has allowed the establishment to reassert its central role in national life. The military, already perceived as the guardian of the country’s external security, returned to center stage.

Public criticism over election conduct and political interference took a backseat to calls for unity and deference. The ceasefire, a product of swift diplomacy involving third-party interlocutors, including the United States, was presented domestically as a triumph of restraint and balance.

The establishment, facing what was arguably its deepest political crisis in years, has emerged from the episode with a renewed credibility. The optics were clear: the military had not only prevented all-out war, it had solemnly protected national sovereignty and forced a regional rival into backing down — all without ceding an inch of ground.

What makes this more striking is that Pakistan gained this advantage without adopting a belligerent posture. New Delhi’s handling of the crisis inadvertently and ironically strengthened the institutions it had hoped to pressure and undermine through international condemnation.

There are, of course, legitimate concerns in India. The Pahalgam attack was a serious security breach, and there are longstanding frustrations over Pakistan’s inability or unwillingness to dismantle cross-border militant networks.

But, in retrospect, India’s strategic misstep was turning a security incident into a regional flashpoint — one that it could not diplomatically control.

What might have been a moment for measured diplomatic pressure, smart intelligence-sharing and global consensus-building instead turned into a brief but costly conflict that in the end left India wrong-footed.

The recent ceasefire may have ended the shooting, but it has exposed a new strategic reality: in a region shaped as much by perception as by raw power, diplomacy matters as much as deterrence. In this round, Pakistan’s establishment understood that better — and played it to their advantage.