How Did Balakot Change the India-Pakistan Crisis Playbook?
For two decades after the 1998 nuclear tests, India – Pakistan crises followed a grimly predictable script. Pakistan relied on jihadi (pigs) proxies, India responded with diplomatic pressure and limited troop mobilisations, and both sides invoked the nuclear shadow to justify restraint. Balakot, in February 2019, quietly shredded that playbook.
The Old “Restraint” Script
From Kargil in 1999 to the Parliament attack (2001- 02) and Mumbai 26/11, Pakistan wagered that its nuclear arsenal gave it space for “bleeding India by a thousand cuts” through terror groups like JeM and LeT. New Delhi worried that any serious military retaliation might trigger uncontrolled escalation, chose strategic restraint, heavy mobilisation in 2001–02 but no cross‑LoC strike and near-complete military inaction after 26/11. The Line of Control (LoC) became a psychological red line, almost treated as sacrosanct even during Kargil when Indian forces were ordered not to cross it.
This created a stable but perverse equilibrium. Pakistan could outsource violence to proxies, expecting that nuclear threats would freeze India’s conventional response. India’s political leadership across parties bought into the belief that the costs and risks of kinetic retaliation outweighed any strategic gain.
From Surgical Strikes to Air Power
That logic began to crack after the 2016 Uri attack. India’s cross LoC “surgical strikes” against terror launch pads marked the first step away from pure restraint signalling that limited, deniable ground raids were now on the table. But even Uri remained confined to the LoC belt and could still be folded into the old pattern of covert skirmishing.
Balakot was qualitatively different. After the Pulwama suicide bombing killed over 40 CRPF personnel, India sent Mirage‑2000s to hit a Pakistani terror group JeM facility deep inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, across the international boundary, not just the LoC. New Delhi also framed the operation as a counter terror strike, not an act of war against the Pakistani state, and explicitly said it targeted “non‑military” objectives to limit escalation optics. In one move, India expanded the geographical scope, the tool set (from covert ground raids to overt air power) and the political vocabulary of retaliation.
Calling the Nuclear Bluff
For years, Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine and rhetoric suggested low thresholds- any significant conventional strike on its territory might trigger nuclear “first use”. That narrative deterred Delhi as much as it deterred Islamabad. Balakot tested those red lines and found them far more flexible than advertised.
Islamabad convened its National Command Authority and hinted at nuclear readiness, but its actual response was conventional, an air raid across the LoC aimed at Indian military targets. Even when India reportedly signalled it was prepared to use conventional missiles if Pakistan escalated further, Islamabad still stayed within the conventional domain. In other words, both sides climbed one rung higher on Herman Kahn’s “escalation ladder” from covert violence and artillery duels to overt cross‑border airstrikes yet remained far below the threshold where nuclear use becomes thinkable.
This matters for deterrence logic. Balakot demonstrated that Pakistan’s nuclear threshold is higher than its signalling suggested and that limited, one‑off air or missile strikes can be absorbed without triggering a nuclear exchange. It chipped away at India’s self‑deterrence: the habit of overestimating nuclear risk and underusing its conventional superiority.
A New Crisis Playbook
Balakot added at least three new elements to the India – Pakistan crisis script.
First, it normalised limited cross‑border air power as a retaliatory option for India. Until 2019, neither side had used manned aircraft to strike across the de facto or international border since the 1971 war. Now, precision airstrikes possibly complemented by drones or conventional missiles – are part of Delhi’s “menu” for future responses to major terror attacks. Later commentary on South Asia’s “new nuclear landscape” explicitly treats Balakot as proof that there is more space for calibrated conventional action under the nuclear umbrella than previously assumed.
Second, it redefined who pays the price for proxy terror. By hitting a camp in mainland Pakistan, not just in PoK, India signalled that the Pakistan Army and state can no longer outsource risk entirely to non‑state groups. Each large scale attack on Indian security forces now carries an expectation, domestically and regionally, that some form of kinetic reply will follow. That alters Islamabad’s cost benefit calculus for supporting or tolerating cross‑border outfits.
Third, Balakot showcased the centrality of narrative management. India invested heavily in framing the strike as a counter‑terror operation, not a punitive war and major partners largely accepted that framing by urging restraint but not condemning the strike itself. Pakistan, by contrast struggled to reconcile its initial claims of repelling the attack with later acknowledgments of some damage, which diluted its deterrent narrative. Crisis diplomacy by third parties from Washington to regional capitals also became more active, treating such limited strikes as something to be managed rather than as immediate preludes to nuclear war.
Risks of a Higher Baseline
Yet the new playbook is not a simple success story. If limited airstrikes are normalised, the “first rung” of serious escalation is now higher than it used to be. Future leaders in Delhi may feel pressured by precedent and public opinion to at least match Balakot, or go beyond it, in response to the next Pulwama scale attack. That raises the floor of crises even as it disproves the idea that any kinetic move leads straight to Armageddon.
There is also the problem of perception asymmetry. Many in India read Balakot as evidence that Pakistan’s nuclear bluff has been called , many in Pakistan read it as a dangerous escalation that nearly spiralled out of control and justified hardening doctrines, including talk of tactical nuclear options. Each side’s internal narrative can, over time push decision‑makers toward riskier bets in order to avoid looking weak relative to what was done in 2019.
Finally, the crisis highlighted the role of friction and error. The downing of an Indian MiG‑21, the capture (and later release) of Wing Commander Abhinandan, and the accidental shoot‑down of an Indian Mi‑17 by friendly fire all showed how quickly a carefully calibrated signal can be muddied by battlefield realities. In any future crisis with more platforms – drones, cyber tools, long‑range fires , the room for miscalculation grows.
Also Read, How Would The Balakot Airstrikes Look Like In 2021?
The Balakot Legacy
Five years on, analysts broadly agree on two points. First, Balakot broke the taboo on cross‑border air power and reduced India’s self‑imposed nuclear restraint, creating more options for limited retaliation against Pakistan‑based terror. Second, it made the crisis ladder steeper, the symbolic “starting point” of serious escalation is now higher, and the space for misreading signals is larger.
In that sense, Balakot did both things at once: it called Pakistan’s nuclear bluff, and it rewrote the script that had kept South Asia in a strange, violent but contained equilibrium. The new playbook offers India more coercive leverage but it also demands finer judgment, tighter control and far more sophisticated crisis management than the old doctrine of passive restraint ever required.
