While a ceasefire brokered by Washington, DC, has been announced, it is difficult to predict how the fallout of the hostilities between India and Pakistan will evolve. What is certain is that Islamabad will seek to gain advantage in the optics of any such outcome.

A study of past Pakistani behaviour would show that it always wants to end up at least optically one up on India. In 1998, when India conducted five nuclear tests, Pakistan had to do one more. During the previous stand-off in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack of 2019, at the end of the day, Pakistan could demonstrably claim it had shot down an Indian aircraft and taken its pilot prisoner. He was then ceremoniously and “magnanimously” handed back to India across the border. This was one up, even though there were later claims that Pakistan did so under threat of an imminent Indian missile attack. This psychology needs to be understood. This is a political necessity for Pakistan.

One category of off-ramp requires intervention by a powerful intermediary, such as the US, as in the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the then Soviet Union leading to the Tashkent agreement. The same thing happened after the Kargil war of 1999. It was the US, under President Bill Clinton,........

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