DAVID PATRIKARAKOS: The terrifying escalation between India and Pakistan represents a global threat like no other. Locals will die, but this is why I fear we could all pay the price LISTEN: 90 Seconds to Midnight is the podcast examining how close we are to Doomsday, each week. Available wherever you get your podcasts now By DAVID PATRIKARAKOS Published: 12:37 BST, 7 May 2025 | Updated: 12:37 BST, 7 May 2025 India and Pakistan are lobbing hardware at each other once again. And it should terrify us all. In the wars between Israel and Islamist militants, or Ukraine and Russia -brutal and bloody as they may be - there is only one nuclear-armed belligerent. Unfair perhaps, but it precludes the possibility of total annihilation. Here, however, we have two such powers. India and Pakistan have long understood each other’s nuclear doctrine. Both operate under the simple concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, with its apt acronym of ‘MAD’: if you launch nukes at a nuclear-armed state, you simply kill yourself, more than likely, and take a chunk of the world with you. The concept is so clear and the cost so utterly devastating that even a cave-dwelling jihadi can understand it. But the risk of misreading enemy intentions or of miscommunication, both endemic in conflict, is real. I have spent years studying Iran’s nuclear programme and the surrounding international non-proliferation architecture. And though we may have largely forgotten about the global nuclear threat, it remains acute. No more so than between these two nations. Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan were founded simultaneously almost 80 years ago. Ripped from the womb of the pre-partition Indian state, they are conjoined twins who have loathed each other since birth. Pakistani security forces stand guard after the Bilal Mosque was hit by an Indian strike in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir The aftermath of the Indian strike on the Bilal Mosque today A loathing that persists, and worsens over time, because it is congenital. And this is not a squabble between two competing elites. The hatred infests Indians and Pakistanis throughout their respective societies, from the wealthy political and mercantile classes to its ubiquitous street-hawkers. After the deadly attack upon tourists a fortnight ago that killed 24 in Indian-administered Kashmir, the country’s prime minister Narendra Modi threatened to pursue the terrorists responsible ‘to the ends of the Earth’. Pakistan has said retaliatory strikes at nine different locations in the early hours of today by the Indian air force have in turn killed 26. India insists it targeted ‘terrorist infrastructure’. What comes next is critical. India’s response, despite accidentally killing several civilians, has so far been reasonably measured, in keeping with the so-called surgical strikes approach it takes to whacking terrorists. Now, though, Pakistan must respond to what it has called an ‘act of war’. The people are angry. The army wants blood. One general has called Kashmir ‘our jugular’ – the sort of bald language that is pregnant with danger. Any sense of perspective is being lost. After the deadly attack upon tourists a fortnight ago, the country’s prime minister Narendra Modi threatened to pursue the terrorists responsible ‘to the ends of the Earth’ Activists burn tyres during an anti-India protest in Muzaffarabad on May 5 The pressure to respond will be irresistible, but how? There are no Hindu terrorist targets to hit in India. Pakistan will have to go after military targets, probably Delhi’s air force. And that way lies a process of escalation with no obvious means of stopping it. Another problem Pakistan faces is that much anti-Indian terrorism comes out of Afghanistan, which it does not control, and its own tribal territories in the north, which it barely controls. We must now hope that the likes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE - to which Pakistan is vastly in debt - step in and tell Islamabad to wind its neck in. If reports are true that Pakistan has shot down five Indian planes, what will Modi do? Such a loss cannot be easily brushed aside. His people will demand vengeance. The result could be a series of escalating tit-for-tat strikes and counter-strikes, and no one knows where that ends. A few years ago, I spoke to a counter-terrorism expert who had worked with Bill Clinton, as the then-president tried to talk India and Pakistan back from the abyss when they clashed during the two-month Kargil War in 1999. The long-running conflict between the two countries is, he told me, the one above all others that he thought could bring global, nuclear disaster. Yet again, India and Pakistan are fighting over Kashmir. And if the conflict is not correctly managed, it will be all of us who pay the price. 90 Seconds to Midnight is the podcast examining how close we are to Doomsday, each week. Available wherever you get your podcasts now PakistanIndia Share or comment on this article: DAVID PATRIKARAKOS: The terrifying escalation between India and Pakistan represents a global threat like no other. Locals will die, but this is why I fear we could all pay the price Add comment