Tit-for-tat strikes between India and Pakistan represent the most extensive military exchange between nuclear neighbors for decades, killing civilians on both sides.
The attacks follow a massacre in the cashmere under Indian control of 25 tourists and a cashmere room last month that New Delhi linked to a “cross -border” involvement of Pakistan, an allegation that Islamabad denies.
The two countries claim cashmere and each controls part of the region. During the last quarter of a century – a period during which India and Pakistan emerged as nuclear powers – the two countries clashed several times, but military exchanges stopped in less than a major war.
This reflected the will of the United States to put diplomatic pressure on both sides, and Chinese reluctance, as the main international benefactor of Pakistan, to allow the situation to degenerate.
It is not clear if one or the other of these conditions still holds, say the analysts.
For Pravin Sawhney, defense analyst and former Indian army officer, American president Donald Trump “said very clearly” that India and Pakistan “can resolve their affairs themselves, and he loves both countries”.
On Wednesday, the Indian armed forces targeted nine “terrorist camps” in air strikes to the cashmere administered by Pakistan and in the depths of the international border between India and Pakistan. “The objectives were neutralized with clinical efficiency … No military establishment has been targeted,” Air Force Commander Vyomika Singh said on Wednesday.
She said Indian forces have used “niche” technological weapons and carefully chose targets to avoid collateral civilians, but have not explained the specific arms or methods used in strikes.
“India has shown considerable pressure in its response,” she added. “However, it must be said that the Indian armed forces are fully ready to respond to the Pakistani misadventures, if necessary, a degeneration of the situation.”
Pakistani military and diplomatic officials told Financial Times that they had killed five Indian fighter planes during Wednesday clashes, including three French manufacturing gusts and two Russian manufacturing planes. The FT could not independently verify the veracity of the complaint.
The Pakistani army of 660,000 people is less than half the size of India and its defense expenses were a tenth of its eastern neighbor last year, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies based in London.
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Partly at the reflection of its size, Islamabad’s military doctrine revolves around “Defense and is only the offensive if the deterrence fails,” said Raza Muhammad, retired general and diplomat.
India, on the other hand, spent 74.4 billion dollars for defense last year, making it the second Asian military budget after China and the sixth in the world as a whole.
“The superiority comes out when there is a total fight. If it degenerates to the total war, then Indian superiority will be at stake and it will be very strong,” said the Rakesh Sharma retirement-general, now a distinguished scholarship holder at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a group of reflection on security based in New Delhi.
“But in the event of limited offensives, they could be close to parity.”
Where the two parties are more equal, it is in nuclear weapons. Pakistan and India both hold between 160 and 170 nuclear warheads in their arsenals, according to the assessments of the Arms Control Association.
The Pakistani army works with certain Chinese companies to extend the range of its ballistic missiles. India has developed its own intercontinental ballistic missiles – AGNI, whose last series has a range of up to 5,000 km.
Arms supply has historically been used to assert the pressure on both sides, whose military directors have a hotline to each other.
During the Kargil War in 1999, the last major war between the two countries that killed hundreds of soldiers on both sides, the United States arrested supplies of spare parts to American weapons on both sides, but most of the F-16 fighters in Pakistan. The American president of the time, Bill Clinton, exerted strong pressure on Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to withdraw his troops from Indian territory.
China provided 81% of imports from Pakistani weapons between 2020 and 2024, according to the International Stockholm Peace Research Institute, because Islamabad has moved away from more expensive Western suppliers and got closer to Beijing. The majority of the Pakistani fleet of fighter aircraft and ground attack has been developed by or in cooperation with China.
India, which has its own defense industry, operates large quantities of Russian equipment and the two countries cooperate on the development of missiles. According to the IISS, it recently imported equipment from the United States and France, and Trump prompted Modi to buy more American manufacturing weapons.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that he “continues to hire Indian and Pakistani leaders towards a peaceful resolution”.
The Chinese government, who says an “foolproof” friend of Islamabad, urged the restraint on both sides. Despite the close links of Beijing with Islamabad, analysts say that he may not want to compromise a rapprochement with India after their recent resolution of a four -year dead end on a disputed border.
On Wednesday, China, which borders the two countries, said that the military operations of India were “regrettable” and urged the two parties to show restraint.
“The Chinese have developed a relationship with India in the past six months. With the commercial and price wars now, China is looking to use India as a large economic avenue to withdraw from the economic problems caused by the Americans, “said Sharma.
Support to Pakistan could come in any way “who does not imply the Chinese themselves.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi clearly told the Pakistani Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohammad Ishaq Dar last month, that “China understands the legitimate security problems of Pakistan and supports Pakistan in the safeguarding of its sovereignty and its security interests”.
Asked about strikes, President Trump said: “I hope it ends very quickly.”
But the chief of staff of the army of India, General Manoj Mukund Naravane, said on X after the strikes on Wednesday: “there is more to come”.
