How real is the India-Pakistan nuclear war threat?

India Today

a day ago

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated June 2, 2025)No battle plan ever survives the first bullet fired in a war. That old military adage held true for the sixth war between India and Pakistan, which ended abruptly in a ceasefire on May 10, four days after it had begun. India planned to deliver a strong punitive deterrent to Pakistan's aiding and abetting terror strikes on our soil, including the attack in Pahalgam this April. It achieved that goal in its very first strike, in the early hours of May 7, when its armed forces launched precision attacks across the international border and the Line of Control, targeting the headquarters and training camps of key Pakistan-backed terror groups. Having deliberately avoided hitting military installations, India informed Pakistan that it had no interest in escalating hostilities further and only if Islamabad retaliated would it respond.advertisementPakistan, though, was in no mood to take India's blows lying down. Over the next three days, fighting intensified, with both sides chiefly deploying their air assets, including high-speed missiles as well as loitering, kamikaze drones to target each other's air bases and military installations. India claimed its superior firepower helped it get the upper hand in these exchanges, forcing Pakistan to call a truce. What it did not anticipate, though, was US president Donald Trump stealing its thunder and claiming victory for stopping the war. In a post on his social media account, Trump declared it was the US that helped mediate a ceasefire, announcing it even before the combatants could do so themselves. Two days later, at a White House briefing, Trump embarrassed India further, claiming, 'We stopped a nuclear conflict. I think it could have been a bad nuclear war. Millions of people could have been killed.'advertisementTrump stuck to that line even after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the nation on May 12, asserted that Operation Sindoor had proved that 'India would not be deterred by nuclear blackmail' and foreign secretary Vikram Misri denied any 'nuclear signalling' during the war. In an interview to Fox News on May 16, Trump said, 'These are major nuclear playersand they were angry. And the next phase was probably—did you see where it was getting? It was tit for tat. It was getting deeper and more missiles, that got stronger and stronger. To a point where the next one's going to be, you know what? The N word. The N word used in a nuclear sense—that's the worst thing that can happen. And I think they were very close. The hatred was great.' With all three nations involved—India, Pakistan and the US—presenting differing versions of what really happened in the final hours of the war, one question still hangs in the air: how real was and is the threat of a nuclear war?
(Graphic by Tanmoy Chakraborty)
THE NUCLEAR EQUATIONNot for nothing did Bill Clinton, as US president, describe the subcontinent as the most dangerous place in the world. Both India and Pakistan had conducted nuclear tests in the summer of 1998, when Clinton was in office, overtly demonstrating their recessed prowess. By then, they already had over 50 nuclear weapons each, a number that has trebled since. Both have perfected accurate supersonic ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, with India relying on the Agni series and Pakistan on the Ghauri and its variants. Apart from air force jets, India has completed the triad of delivery systems for nuclear weapons by equipping two of its nuclear submarines with a sea variant of the strategic missiles.advertisementIn terms of doctrine, India believes in no-first use of its nuclear weapons. But if Pakistan does use a nuclear missile against it, it will retaliate massively and destroy all its major cities. Pakistan, on the other hand, believes in using its nukes first if its territorial integrity or economy is under threat; it will apply the full spectrum of nuclear weapons in its possession in that eventuality. If either launches a nuclear weapon like the 15-kiloton bomb in Hiroshima on Mumbai or Karachi, the death toll, experts say, could exceed a million, while large parts of these cities will be rendered unfit for human habitation for decades because of the impact of the radiation.advertisementAshley Tellis, author of several seminal books on South Asia's nuclear conundrum, believes Pakistan has overtaken India and possesses the largest and most diversified nuclear arsenal in the region. This is because, he says, 'Pakistan is increasingly driven less by what India is actually doing and more by its fervid imaginings of India's capabilities coupled with an expansive—and expanding—notion of what its nuclear requirements entail.' In the past decade, Pakistan has added tactical nuclear weapons and missiles suited for battlefield scenarios to thwart an unexpected land invasion by India. It has thus introduced a hair-trigger complexity, as the command and control of tactical weapons have to be decentralised to the brigade level for effective use during crisis, leaving the so-called nuclear button in the hands of relative juniors.advertisementContrary to expectations that the possession of such dangerous weapons would reduce the risk of a confrontation for fear of mutually assured destruction, the two nations have found themselves on the brink of a nuclear conflagration on three major occasions. The first was in 1999, a year after their respective nuclear tests, when the two countries fought a bitter border war in the icy heights of Kargil under the shadow of a nuclear umbrella. When both sides brandished their nukes, Clinton was forced to step in and tell Pakistan to withdraw its intrusion and restore status quo. The US had to intervene again after the 2001 terror attack on India's Parliament to prevent an all-out war between the two countries by forcing Pakistan to take strict action against terror.The third nuclear confrontation took place as recently as February 2019, following the Pulwama terror attack that killed 40 paramilitary personnel, prompting India to send fighter jets to strike terrorist camps in Balakot, deep within Pakistani territory. However, when an Indian pilot was captured in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir after his fighter jet was shot down and he bailed out, the crisis, according to then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, came close 'to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration'. Pakistan accused India of moving its nuclear-armed submarine close to its shores and gave orders to keep its nukes in readiness. It took Pompeo and then US national security advisor John Bolton much jaw-jawing with leaders of the two sides to defuse the situation, with the pilot set free and both India and Pakistan claiming victory.
DANGEROUS BRINKMANSHIPDespite the sixth war between India and Pakistan lasting just four days compared to the two-month-long 1999 Kargil war, Lisa Curtis, director, Indo Pacific Security Program, Center for a New American Security, in Washington DC, believes it was the most serious Indo-Pak conflict since the 1971 Bangladesh war. Her reason: 'The scope and breadth of the territory involved in this war was vast compared to the limited border strikes in the 1999 Kargil war. I have been following India-Pakistan now for 30 years and the sight of two nuclear-armed states barraging each other with missiles and drone strikes over a four-day period, striking military installations deep inside each other's territory, was both shocking and alarming.'From US vice-president J.D. Vance telling Fox News on May 8 that this conflict was none of America's business to calling up PM Modi 12 hours later, asking India to de-escalate, is how rapidly the situation had escalated. According to American media reports, Vance had conveyed to Modi on May 9 that, as per US assessment, there was a high probability of Pakistan dramatically escalating violence, and pressed the Indian premier for a potential off-ramp to stop hostilities that would also be acceptable to the Pakistanis. But while the reports said Modi was non-committal, sources in India's external affairs ministry reveal that the Indian prime minister told Vance, 'If the Pakistanis do anything, please be assured that they will get a response more forceful, stronger and more devastating than anything they did. Pakistan needs to understand this.'Modi's warning went unheeded by Pakistan. That evening, around 8.30, its armed forces launched Operation Bunyan Marsoos (literally, a wall of lead, but a phrase that symbolises unity, strength and discipline), unleashing a wave of retaliatory strikes using drones, heavy artillery and missiles on 26 sensitive Indian locations, including air bases and military installations. It even launched a Fatah-II missile, a supersonic guided artillery rocket system with 400-km range, to strike the Delhi airport, but India's missile defence system intercepted it near Sirsa. India claims to have neutralised most incoming Pakistani munitions with minimal damage.India struck back ferociously in the early hours of May 10 around 1.10 am, using among other missiles the BrahMos, its hypersonic cruise missile. It targeted eight air bases, including the one at Nur Khan in Chaklala between Rawalpindi, the general headquarters of the Pakistan army, and capital Islamabad. India's armed forces released photographs, showing the damage to vital infrastructure there. The Nur Khan base is also close to Pakistan's nuclear command and control headquarters. Pakistan prime minister Shehbaz Sharif later revealed that army chief General Asim Munir had called him up at 2.30 am and informed him of the attack on the air bases, including the one close to the capital. Meanwhile, sources disclose that the Indian navy, too, had by then positioned its strike fleet close to Karachi and had been alerted that orders to begin a blockade of Pakistan's ports were imminent.
THE TIPPING POINTExperts in the know say that on May 10 between 2.30 am and 10.30 am—for eight hours, that is—the fate of the subcontinent hung in the balance. Brig. Feroz Hassan Khan (retd), a research professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, who had earlier served in Pakistan's Strategic Plans Division, says, 'The fact that Nur Khan was hit [near] the capital city would create more political pressure. Both India and Pakistan had climbed the rungs of the military escalation ladder so fast, it was evident that in the next 24-48 hours, the tipping point would have been reached for an all-out war.' That India had hit at strategic air bases such as Nur Khan, and Mushaf at Sargodha, meant that red lines were about to be crossed. 'Had India inadvertently hit a nuclear storage site, Pakistan would have considered it as a first strike and retaliated with nuclear weapons. If the ceasefire had not been called on May 10, the next night would have been a terrible one,' says Khan.Tellis is among those who do not think the crisis was near nuclear boiling point. He believes the Indian air strikes of May 10 were extremely modest because, he says, 'The fear of nuclear escalation is always baked into such conflicts. Destroying infrastructure is not something you can do in a single spasm of violence, it needs protracted targeting. In Nur Khan, India didn't set out to decapitate the nuclear command system. What they did was more of a psychological campaign of uncertainty, intimidation and fear, which is the real payoff rather than physically destroying large portions of infrastructure.' Unless there is clear evidence of Pakistan moving to elevate its nuclear weapons readiness levels, Tellis finds it hard to believe the current crisis would have careened towards a nuclear war.MEA sources, too, maintain the crisis never acquired nuclear dimensions, and that Pakistan climbed down after the air strikes on its bases as it realised that another two days of war would have forced it into humiliating submission. They say it was Gen. Munir who got in touch with Rubio early that morning and requested him to get India to stand down. Soon after, Rubio called external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, who told him that if Pakistan wanted to cease hostilities, it needed to communicate it via the hotline between their respective director generals of military operations. Maj. Gen. Kashif Abdullah, Pakistan's DGMO, then called his Indian counterpart, Lt Gen. Rajiv Ghai, at 3.35 pm and told him that Pakistan wanted a ceasefire. India agreed and it was mutually decided that it would come into force at 5 pm that day. India denies US intervention in bringing this about.This explanation flies against Trump's assertion that he had averted a potential nuclear conflict. Rubio, too, had several rounds of discussions with the key players—Jaishankar, Gen. Munir, Shehbaz Sharif and India's national security advisor Ajit Doval. In a social media post, Rubio thanks these leaders and says that both countries had not only agreed to an immediate ceasefire but also 'to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site'. This seemed in consonance with state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce's read-out of Rubio's conversations with Munir and Jaishankar. The one with Munir read, 'He continued to urge both parties to find ways to de-escalate and offered US assistance in starting constructive talks in order to avoid future conflicts.' The read-out with Jaishankar, on the other hand, went thus: 'Rubio emphasised that both sides need to identify methods to de-escalate and re-establish communication to avoid miscalculation. He further proposed US support in facilitating productive discussions to avert future disputes.' Posting his take on the conversation, Jaishankar's message on X read: 'Had a conversation with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio this morning. India's approach has always been measured and responsible and remains so.'
THE ENDGAMEIn off-the-record briefings, however, the MEA says there was no such agreement to resume talks with Pakistan as it would run contrary to India's stated policy of no talks unless Pakistan turns off the terror tap. Christopher Clary, assistant professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and an expert on South Asian nuclear issues, believes the truce came about through a combination of factors, including the likelihood of US intelligence agencies observing a change in the readiness status of Pakistan's nuclear assets. 'My hypothesis,' says Clary, 'is that a combination of Indian military pressure combined with US inducements created a mix of carrots and sticks that made Pakistan indicate it could cease hostilities.' Curtis agrees that India and Pakistan would not have agreed to a ceasefire on their own and needed third-party intervention to step back from the nuclear brink.Pakistan, though, saw Trump's observations and Rubio's comments as a significant victory. Not only did Trump, in a subsequent briefing, offer to mediate between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, the US also told India to hold talks on key issues. Pakistan claimed they were able to internationalise the Kashmir issue again and get re-hyphenated with India. Gen. Munir got himself promoted to Field Marshal to demonstrate his clout and cement his status as the de facto czar of Pakistan.The sense of triumphalism in the Pakistan military worries Curtis. 'It makes it seem like this act of terrorism helped draw international attention to Kashmir and sends a wrong signal that could encourage more violence in the future,' she says. 'It doesn't help calm tensions in the region.' She believes the US must quietly work behind the scenes to encourage the two sides to get some kind of bilateral dialogue going, including on the issues of terrorism and nuclear risk reduction.Most admit the truce is tenuous, and another terrorist act could trigger a resumption of hostilities. Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the US and senior fellow, Hudson Institute, Washington DC, says, 'The jihadis may want to break the peace, but I think Pakistan will now put a leash on them as they don't want to go down this path again.' The real problem, Haqqani fears, is that the public in both countries is jingoistic and seemingly unaware of the grave dangers of a nuclear miscalculation. 'Our attitude seems to be that even if the plane we are travelling in is crashing, we are laughing and asking for more whisky,' he says. Hassan Khan believes India and Pakistan need to build an architecture that can sort out such things immediately before they get into 'a commitment trap' that pushes them towards a dangerous war. Tellis thinks the longer term challenge is now tied up with the future of India-Pakistan relations and cannot be resolved without actual engagement between the two countries. 'To my mind, the question is how do you punish the enemy by minimising the risks to yourself,' he says. Talking about nuclear war, a sci-fi movie from the Cold War era had this line: 'It is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.' It could be a tactic worth practising.Subscribe to India Today MagazineTune InMust Watch