By Sidra Shaukat
South Asia’s geography places it at the crossroads of Central Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean, making it pivotal for regional and economic connectivity. Yet regional peace has long been held hostage by unresolved political and territorial disputes.
This persistent discord is precisely why the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has never managed to establish itself as a genuinely unifying multilateral body. At the heart of the region’s stability lies the India-Pakistan relationship, without which neither durable peace nor intraregional economic integration is realistically achievable.
To understand the evolving dynamics of regional stability and crisis management, the May 2025 crisis stands out as a case demanding closer scrutiny. Previous confrontations tended to escalate in stages that allowed both sides the space to reassess and pull back from the brink. May 2025 broke from that template entirely as it unfolded rapidly. It is also noteworthy that these developments did not come as a complete surprise rather it validated long-standing warnings that the region’s deterrence framework was being tested by India’s military adventurism. India and Pakistan had, for roughly twenty-five years, operated on an implicit assumption that force could be used without either side crossing into nuclear territory. The four-day war of May 2025 tested that wager more severely than any episode since 1999 and therefore, it is imperative to revisit the pillars of South Asian crisis management.
What Changed
The proximate trigger of the May 2025 crisis was familiar. It was a militant attack on 22 April that killed 26 civilians at Pahalgam. It was followed by events that have fundamentally altered the regional escalation landscape between India and Pakistan. First there was unfounded Indian accusation against Pakistan and after that, under the guise of alleged militant infrastructure, India conducted missile and air strikes against Pakistan’s civilian infrastructure at multiple cities in mainland. Pakistan strongly condemned India’s blatant violation of its sovereignty, regarding it as an act of war and responded with retaliatory strikes.
The conflict of 2025 is different because it diverged from previous crises, Pulwama-Balakot, in many important ways. First, the crisis lasted four days rather than subsiding within forty-eight hours, and it scaled up the conventional ladder than in 2019. Second, Operation Sindoor’s opening strikes on the night of 6-7 May were followed by an unprecedented beyond-visual-range aerial engagement involving well over a hundred aircraft where India lost several aircraft to Pakistan’s aerial showdown. Third, it was the first time that India used cruise missiles against Pakistan and Pakistan used conventionally armed Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) in the form of Fatah 1 and Fatah 2 against India. It was also the first time that both states employed drone warfare to cause damage to the other side. Fourth, India moved the Indus Waters Treaty from a background irritant to an active instrument of coercion by holding it in abeyance on 23 April and later, manipulating downstream flows from the Baglihar and Kishanganga dams. Pakistan explicitly labelled this as an “act of war.” Till date, the treaty remains suspended and it has introduced a new volatile crisis-triggering mechanism.
The final significant development was that the U.S, as an escalation control actor, behaved differently than in 2019. Washington’s early posture during the conflict was unusual when Vice President Vance commented that the conflict was “none of our business,” and later President Trump framed the dispute as a millennium-old feud. These remarks signaled that the incumbent US administration was considerably less invested in reflexive crisis management than the previous administrations. The eventual ceasefire announcement came from Washington, but the diplomatic architecture behind it looked thinner, and the ceasefire was reached after a direct DGMO-to-DGMO channel rather than primarily through US-brokered pressure.
The Pillars That held, and the Ones That Didn’t
During the 2025 crisis, Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) in place between India and Pakistan were ignored. The Indus Waters Treaty, the Simla Agreement (suspended by Pakistan in response to Indian suspension of Indus Water Treaty), and the Attari-Wagah protocols were all either suspended or degraded. The one CBM channel that held, the DGMO hotline, is the single clearest vindication of a trust-based, working-level communication, and arguably the strongest empirical case for accelerating rather than shelving proposals such as a standing communication secretariat and a dedicated CBMs monitor. Moreover, third party intervention for escalation control remains real, but it is now visibly conditional on the approach of sitting US administration and how it weighs its relationships with New Delhi and Islamabad. A crisis management model built on the assumption that a motivated Washington will always show up now appears as a fragile model.
What Can Be Done
The 2025 Crisis exposed that there are four priorities that both states directly need to follow to control escalation. First, institutionalize the DGMO channel, and build a leader-to-leader hotline that is still missing. The May 2025 ceasefire’s dependence on a single working-level channel, with no equivalent trusted link between the Heads of State and reportedly no direct contact even at the height of the crisis. It is exactly the same communication gap that was presented at Pulwama-Balakot times and it still exists. It is the mechanism through which the next crisis will either be capped early or allowed to spiral.
Second, it is now important to treat water as a nuclear-adjacent CBM domain, not merely a bilateral grievance. Any CBMs monitoring mechanism should be explicitly extended to cover hydrological data-sharing and dam operations, given that India has now demonstrated a willingness to use river flow as coercive leverage. Track 2 work modeled similar to the 1988 Non-Attack Agreement should also establish to manage water infrastructure.
Third, indulge other regional actors for the third-party brokering proposition. US engagement is now demonstrably contingent on the political preferences of whoever has better relations with the U.S, therefore, South Asian crisis management and escalation control framework cannot be designed only around Washington’s availability. Gulf intermediaries, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, played a behind the scene role in securing the reparation of captured Indian pilot in 2019, and reportedly again in 2025. Including other actors to act as mediator, rather than relying on ad hoc diplomacy, would reduce dependence on any single mediator’s disposition.
Conclusion
The May 2025 crisis did not simply repeat the pattern of Kargil, or the Pulwama-Balakot. It compressed the timeline, introduced water as a coercive instrument, and exposed how contingent outside mediation has become on the political mood in Washington. What held, narrowly, and only at the working level, was direct military-to-military communication, a fact that should reorient how both capitals should think about crisis prevention and crisis management in the future. The lesson of the last year is that South Asia’s deterrence architecture now heavily relies on managing risks (such as hydrological coercion, thinner third-party engagement, and a frozen rather than permanent ceasefire) that it was never designed to absorb. Until India and Pakistan treat this as an urgent problem, the region will remain a spark away from catastrophic conflict.
Author: Sidra Shaukat – Research Officer at the Strategic Vision Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy or views of World Geostrategic Insights).