Christopher Clary: Reflections on the May 2025 India-Pakistan Crisis

Welcome back to Strategic Dialogues, a

series from the Simpson C Center's

Strategic Learning Initiative. I'm your

host, Elizabeth Thralk, director of

South Asia Work at STEMson. On this

show, we bring you regular candid

conversations with experts on the most

pressing security issues in Southern

Asia. This is a special episode of

Strategic Dialogues as we approach the

one-year anniversary of the May 2025

IndiaPakistan crisis. I can think of no

better guest than our non-resident

fellow, Dr. Christopher Clary who will

help us revisit the May crisis and

reflect on lessons that both sides are

and are not learning. His working paper

four days in May, the India Pakistan

crisis of 2025 is the most read article

in Stimson's history uh and provides an

invaluable first take of history on the

crisis. Um so Chris, thank you so much

for joining us. It's really a pleasure

to have you and I'm looking forward to

the conversation.

>> Thank you, Elizabeth.

>> Great. For those who don't know Chris,

uh, he is a non-resident fellow with

Simpson South Asia program and an

associate professor of political science

at the University of Albany, State

University of New York. His research

focuses on the causes and consequences

of nuclear proliferation, US defense

policy, and the politics of South Asia.

His most recent book, which is a great

read, is the difficult politics of

peace, rivalry in modern South Asia, and

was published in 2022.

So on today's episode, we'll divide our

conversation into roughly three parts.

The first will revisit the May crisis

and learnings over the past year. The

second will cover how the ongoing Iran

conflict may shape crisis dynamics in

South Asia and the third will look

towards the future of India Pakistan

relations and broader regional

stability. Um so with that let us dive

right in. Um, now Chris, just to get us

started, um, for those who haven't read

Chris's paper, Four Days in May, um, it

really was a remarkable, uh, early draft

of history of what we knew and what we

didn't know of the crisis that came out

less than a month, uh, after the crisis

played out in May. Um but now that we

have a little bit more benefit of time

and the dust has settled to an extent um

I'd be curious for your reflections on

that paper uh close to a year on now. So

how did you do overall um in assessing

where things stood uh over the course of

the crisis and after it? You know what

do you think you got right and um how

much more do we know now that we didn't

know at the end of May when uh we

published it? Yeah, I go back uh to that

working paper quite a bit. Uh I've I've

tried to follow the developments that

have occurred in the intervening we're

almost up to an intervening year.

Certainly at intervening 11 months since

it came out. Um and I would say it is a

little surprising how much the first

draft of history has uh corresponded to

maybe the second draft. Now that doesn't

mean it's going to correspond to the

final draft. There's still a lot that we

don't know. But the things that we don't

know today at the end of April when

we're speaking in 2026 are pretty

similar to the things we didn't know at

the end of May in 2025. So in the

immediate aftermath of the conflict, um

we have a lot more details about things.

We can see uh new images on commercial

satellite imagery that weren't im

immediately available. But the basic

contours that this was uh a brief but

very violent event that used new weapon

systems that had not previously um been

seen in the subcontinent and uh new

weapon systems that had only been seen

in a few you know conflicts globally. Uh

that element that that brief conflict

was also very violent um and had tested

escalation in novel ways. that basic

outline is is still there. Um, and what

has perhaps changed is the politics of

of remembering the conflict, the

politics of the aftermath. And so those

have evolved considerably um in part

because of surprises uh relating to um

how the US president would want to

record his role in the conflict and how

the regional you know the participants

India and Pakistan would want to think

about um their performance as well and

that has that has continually played out

but the the nooks and crannies of what

took place there we've learned less in

the last 11 months than you might

expect.

Um, I want to go back into this moment

of crisis and as we're remembering how

it took place from, you know, those four

days of, as you say, uh, really

unprecedented levels of

violent kinetic action between the two

sides. you know what is your assessment

of how well both India and Pakistan read

the signals that were being sent by the

adversaries military operations after

the onset of conflict and I asked that

particularly in the context of um the

work that we've done through the

strategic learning initiative on the

challenges the misperceptions that can

creep in the difficulty of sending

signals uh particularly in this sort of

crisis environment so what is your sense

of of how well the two sides ites were

able to read one another.

>> You know, it's interesting that both

India and Pakistan used weapon systems

that they had acquired for exactly these

sorts of contingencies, but they did use

them in ways that I think uh surprised

the adversary if not the the manner of

deployment um than the time of

deployment in the crisis. You know,

going back to when I started my career

as a as a baby research assistant at the

Stimson Center, I have been talking to

Indians and Pakistanis about

hypothetical crises in South Asia. And

in those earliest conversations, the

modalities were often thinking about

ground combat or or manned aircraft um

going on bombing raids in the other

side. And uh there was always a sense

that ground combat [snorts] created

a set of forces that were very hard to

control and that air power would be

attractive to Indian decision makers

looking to punish Pakistan as a way to

more precisely calibrate the escalatory

spiral they were about to enter into.

And equally there was always a sense

that Pakistan would want to deny India

victory on the cheap and those forces

did play out. The big development of the

conflict was that it sort of enshrined

air power as what the Indian air chief

now refers to as the sword arm of the

Indian state. Um but that

doing so meant that large chunks of both

countries were now exposed to violence

from the other side. the air power um by

more precisely limiting down to the aim

points of what is hit uh versus ground

power which has this tendency to

horizontally expand

um in in weird ways. It it meant that

you know kind of 200 kilometers give or

take from the international board and

the LOC were fair game for violence and

that played out more on the Pakistani

side than the Indian side because

Pakistan had more difficulty using its

air power to reach deep into India than

vice versa. Um but that dynamic is is

maybe one of the most important

breakthroughs of the conflict and

there's a lot of reporting that as India

thinks about how to rearrange its

military it is leaning toward giving the

Indian air force a greater role in in in

confronting Pakistan contingencies.

>> Yeah. Um, one of the other elements here

of course that we were keeping a close

eye on is the role or lack thereof of

nuclear signaling. Um, and initially

after the crisis you wrote that quote

overt nuclear signaling was lower than

in many prior India Pakistan crisis

close quote. Um, how does that

assessment uh shake out a year after?

You know, how much do you think the