Nearly two weeks after India and Pakistan reached an uneasy cease-fire, neither New Delhi nor Islamabad agree on what happened preceding it. India blames Pakistan for the April 22 terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that left 26 people dead; Pakistan denies responsibility. On May 7, India launched retaliatory missile strikes against targets in Pakistan associated with known terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed; both sides dispute the scale and impact of these attacks. That barrage prompted further salvos that led to the downing of Indian fighter jets (according to Pakistani and international media) and Pakistani jets (according to Indian media). Drones and missiles whizzed across the border in both directions, with the governments and national media offering dueling claims about targets hit, infrastructure destroyed, and lives lost. Fighting came to an end after senior U.S. officials pressed both sides to step back from the brink, but even here the fog of war prevails; while Islamabad thanked U.S. President Donald Trump for helping bring the fighting to an end, New Delhi denied that any mediation took place.

Although the dust remains in the air, some outcomes are clear. The recent fighting represents a significant escalation in the cross-border disputes that have periodically flared between India and Pakistan. Unlike India’s limited punitive strikes in the past, this offensive pressed deeper into Pakistani territory. India’s Operation Sindoor ranged far beyond Pakistani-administered Kashmir into Punjab, Pakistan’s heartland, eventually hitting not just the facilities of militant groups but also military targets, including air bases. In recent decades, fighting has mostly been confined to the border region around the disputed territory of Kashmir. In May, Pakistan’s major metropolises and many big cities in northern India were on high alert.

With its strikes, the Indian government hoped to demonstrate strength to a public that wanted revenge for the terrorist attack in Kashmir. But by venturing deeper into Pakistan and hitting a broad array of targets, India also wanted to reestablish deterrence and discourage Pakistan’s military from backing militant groups active in Indian territory. In that effort, India will probably be disappointed. Rather than deterring its rival, India precipitated a retaliation that ended up burnishing the Pakistani military’s reputation and boosting its domestic popularity. Paradoxically, India’s retribution has handed the Pakistani army its biggest symbolic victory in recent decades. And that will hardly discourage Islamabad from reining in the proxy war against New Delhi or from risking future flare-ups between these two nuclear-armed states.

Pakistan’s military has long used proxies against India. A group affiliated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, which famously staged a bloody attack on Mumbai in 2008, claimed responsibility for the April massacre in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan denied any involvement in the incident, but that didn’t persuade India. Soon after the attack, India took the unprecedented step of unilaterally suspending the Indus Water Treaty, an agreement brokered by the World Bank in 1960 to manage the flow of water critical for hydropower, irrigation, and agriculture in Pakistan. The treaty had endured several wars and militarized disputes between the two countries, but no longer. The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi eventually coupled this diplomatic act with its military attack on a slew of targets in Pakistani territory. It may have hoped that these efforts would assuage the domestic outrage over Pahalgam without provoking a wider conflict. But here New Delhi miscalculated.

Indian officials underestimated how much the Pakistani military needed to demonstrate its own war readiness and resolve, both to India and to its domestic audience. According to accounts in the Pakistani and international press, Pakistan’s Chinese-made jets and air defense systems shot down several Indian fighter........

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