Managed Hostility: Pakistan–India Relations in a Multipolar Moment

Pakistan and India are not on the brink of war, nor anywhere near a thaw. The relationship has settled into something more durable and, in its own way, more dangerous: a managed hostility in which diplomatic channels are minimal, trade is near-frozen, people-to-people contact has withered, and each capital has largely stopped expecting anything of the other.

The frozen baseline. Since the constitutional changes in Indian-administered Kashmir in 2019 and the diplomatic downgrade that followed, the relationship has lacked the routine machinery — high commissioners, trade, regular dialogue — that once absorbed shocks. The Line of Control has been relatively quiet under the ceasefire understanding, but quiet is not the same as stable. It is calm without communication.

The multipolar overlay. Both states are embedded in wider alignments that shape, and constrain, their bilateral conduct. India’s deepening ties with Washington and its role in Indo-Pacific frameworks pull its strategic attention eastward and toward China. Pakistan’s reliance on China, and its recalibrated relationships in the Gulf, anchor it in a different bloc. Paradoxically, this wider competition lowers the salience of the bilateral relationship for both — each has bigger games to play — which reduces the appetite for crisis but also the incentive to invest in détente.

The water question. The most under-appreciated risk is the Indus Waters Treaty. Indian moves to review or renegotiate the treaty touch Pakistan’s most existential vulnerability — agricultural water security. Unlike Kashmir, where the equilibrium is frozen, water is an area where the status quo could actually shift, with consequences that are economic before they are military.

Where miscalculation lives. With channels thin, the danger is a kinetic incident — a militant attack with cross-border attribution, an LoC escalation — that neither side can de-escalate quickly because the off-ramps have atrophied. The 2019 cycle showed how fast events can move when communication is absent.

Outlook. Our base case for the year is continuity: no normalisation, no major crisis, episodic rhetoric around Kashmir and water. The risk to that base case is not a decision to fight. It is the absence of the routine contact that, in calmer eras, kept incidents from becoming crises.