India and Pakistan have seemingly pulled again from the brink once more. However a lot was new in regards to the nuclear-armed enemies’ chaotic four-day conflict, and so most of the underlying accelerants stay risky, that there’s little to recommend that the truce represents any return to previous patterns of restraint.
A brand new era of navy know-how fueled a dizzying aerial escalation. Waves of airstrikes and antiaircraft volleys with fashionable weapons set the stage. Quickly they had been joined by weaponized drones en masse for the primary time each alongside the 2 nations’ intensive boundaries and deep into their territory — a whole bunch of them within the sky, probing every nation’s defenses and placing with out danger to any pilot.
Then the missiles and drones had been streaking previous the border areas and deep into India’s and Pakistan’s territories, instantly hitting air and protection bases, prompting dire threats and the best degree of navy alert.
Solely then did worldwide diplomacy — an important consider previous pullbacks between India and Pakistan — appear to interact in earnest, at what felt just like the final minute earlier than disaster. In a brand new world chapter outlined by perilous conflicts, distracted leaders and a retreating sense of worldwide accountability to maintain peace, the protection web had by no means appeared thinner.
“Going again traditionally, most of the India-Pakistan conflicts have been stopped due to exterior intervention,” mentioned Srinath Raghavan, a navy historian and strategic analyst.
