India’s attempt to defend its decision to place the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance rests on a fundamental legal misconception: a state cannot acquire a power simply by announcing that it has one.

In his Newsweek article, India’s Ambassador to the United States, Vinay Mohan Kwatra, presents New Delhi’s position as though the suspension of the Treaty were a legitimate response to Pakistan’s alleged conduct. But political dissatisfaction, however strongly expressed, does not by itself create a legal entitlement to disregard a treaty. The real issue is not whether India is unhappy with Pakistan. It is whether international law permits India to unilaterally suspend an agreement that remains legally binding. The answer is far more complicated for New Delhi than Kwatra’s article suggests.

The text of the Indus Waters Treaty itself presents the first obstacle. Article XII(4) provides that the Treaty continues in force until terminated through a duly ratified treaty between the two governments. There is no clause giving either side an unrestricted unilateral power to place the agreement in “abeyance.” India cannot manufacture such a power through political declaration when the Treaty contains no such provision.

Nor can allegations of terrorism automatically alter that legal position.

India has repeatedly linked its decision to the Pahalgam attack and alleged Pakistani involvement. But an accusation is not the same thing as an established fact. Pakistan offered a joint investigation and subsequently indicated that it was prepared to have the matter examined by an independent forum. India rejected those proposals. The UN Special Rapporteurs, moreover, observed that India had not supplied credible evidence establishing Pakistan’s responsibility.

That distinction is crucial. International law cannot operate on the principle that an allegation, once made by one state, becomes sufficient legal justification for punitive action against another. If that were accepted, any government could accuse another of responsibility for an attack and then declare itself entitled to disregard its treaty obligations. The result would be a system in which legal commitments survive only for as long as political relations remain convenient.

That is not international law. It is the law of unilateral discretion.

There is another dimension to the dispute that the Ambassador’s argument largely overlooks. The Indus Waters Treaty does not exist in isolation from the broader international legal regime governing international rivers and transboundary water resources.

Water is not an ordinary commodity. For hundreds of millions of people, it is directly connected with food production, health, livelihoods and economic survival. That is why international law has developed a substantial body of principles concerning the equitable and reasonable use of shared water resources, the prevention of significant harm and cooperation between states sharing international watercourses.

The legal framework extends well beyond the Treaty itself. The UN Watercourses Convention, the UNECE Water Convention, the Helsinki Rules, the Stockholm Declaration, the Dublin Declaration, Agenda 21, the Mar del Plata Action Plan, the Protocol on Water and Health and other international instruments and declarations have contributed to the development of international norms relating to water. Some of these principles have acquired wider significance as customary international law.

The Ambassador therefore cannot reduce the dispute to a simple bilateral disagreement in which India may exercise whatever leverage it possesses upstream.

The institutional structure of the Indus Waters Treaty presents another difficulty for India’s position. The Treaty establishes mechanisms for addressing disagreements and disputes. Those mechanisms exist precisely because relations between states may deteriorate and because disagreements may become politically charged. The purpose of an international legal agreement is not to function only when both parties are satisfied with one another.

Pakistan has continued to rely on the Treaty’s dispute-resolution mechanisms. India, by contrast, has refused to participate in the Hague-based Court of Arbitration proceedings. But refusing to appear before an adjudicatory body does not make the underlying legal process disappear. Nor can a state invalidate an international proceeding merely by declining to participate in it.

The same principle applies to international inquiries. If India possesses decisive evidence linking Pakistan to the Pahalgam attack, the appropriate course is to place that evidence before an impartial investigative mechanism. That would allow the evidence to be tested........

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