As the general officer commanding the Kargil Sector, I remember standing on the 13,620 ridge in December 2012, feeling the high‑altitude wind and realizing we faced more than a military opponent. We were facing an institutional doctrine forged over decades. Pakistan’s army does not fight for the moment; it fights for continuity.
Over years of service — from Uri in 1983 to Siachen in 1984 and countless episodes along the Line of Control (LoC) — I observed a pattern: infiltration, raids and proxy operations that were not impulsive but calculated. Each action aimed to perpetuate friction, extract leverage and impose costs on India while avoiding full‑scale confrontation.
American political scientist Christine Fair captures this logic: “For the Pakistan Army, simply retaining the ability to challenge India is victory. To acquiesce is tantamount to eroding the legitimacy of the Pakistani state.” The army’s focus is less on conquering territory than on preserving a perpetual war posture and the option to continue conflict indefinitely.
Origins of a permanent conflict
The roots of this posture trace back to the trauma of Partition in 1947. Early wars over Kashmir reinforced the perception of India as an existential threat. The 1971 loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) deepened the military’s mistrust of civilian leadership and strengthened its resolve to remain the guarantor of national survival. Strategic depth, framed initially as geographic concept, became an institutional doctrine aimed at safeguarding the army’s primacy.
General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s fused Islamization with proxy strategies in Kashmir and Afghanistan, creating a template for controlled irregular warfare that persists. This model privileges the army’s institutional continuity over democratic norms or immediate stability. As Fair notes, Pakistan’s revisionist goals toward India have increased in scope despite limited territorial gains.
The doctrine of controlled instability
Pakistan’s approach against India works on several reinforcing axes. First, it maintains credible nuclear deterrence to prevent all‑out war. Second, it employs proxies — militias and nonstate actors — to impose costs on India while providing deniability. Third, it uses psychological and information operations to sustain a narrative of Indian aggression, which legitimizes the army domestically.
This mix produces the stability–instability paradox: nuclear weapons deter large‑scale war but enable low‑intensity conflict below the threshold of strategic exchange. Events such as Kargil (1999), the Mumbai attacks (2008), Pulwama (2019) and Pahalgam (2025) have been used to signal capability, extract diplomatic leverage and justify military dominance at home. Each episode is a calculated gamble designed to sow confusion and maintain relevance without inviting decisive retaliation.
On the ground, the doctrine appears in light‑armed infiltration teams, ambushes and episodic escalations intended to force Indian responses that can be managed diplomatically and militarily. For Pakistan’s army, taking risks is preferable to doing nothing, because inaction is interpreted as institutional defeat.
The US connection and China alliance
Pakistan’s strategic calculus extends beyond India. During the Cold War and Afghan jihad, Pakistan leveraged ties to the United States for funding, training and intelligence growth while preserving autonomy in regional matters. Even post‑9/11, Islamabad combined counterterror cooperation with Washington with continued proxy efforts in Kashmir and Afghanistan. This duality grants strategic flexibility: cooperation with the US on some fronts and independent revisionist action on others.
Concurrently, Pakistan has cultivated a deep partnership with China. Since the 1960s Beijing has supplied weapons, training and diplomatic backing. The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) demonstrates the material and strategic interdependence between Islamabad and Rawalpindi. But the alliance is transactional: Pakistan seeks maximum advantage while managing dependency risks. China remains primarily disciplined and transactional, less willing to tolerate instability that threatens its economic and strategic investments.
The logic of perpetual war and its costs
The army’s logic is stark: perpetual war preserves institutional authority. Proxy networks, psychological operations and cross‑border raids produce diplomatic attention and bargaining power far exceeding the material investment. In Kashmir this means episodic escalation accompanies any negotiation or ceasefire, reinforcing the army’s domestic indispensability.
This strategy inflicts real costs: domestic security is threatened by blowback from militant networks, economic growth is hampered, and international credibility erodes. Civil‑military tensions surface when politicians seek to reclaim authority. Yet the army manages these contradictions by prioritizing institutional continuity over short‑term stability; resilience is built into its approach.
India’s security dilemma: Pakistan and China
India faces a difficult strategic dilemma: long borders with both Pakistan and China demand attention and resources. Pakistan counts on India’s divided focus. India must sustain credible deterrence across domains — integrating intelligence, conventional forces and rapid response capabilities — without neglecting either front.
Operationally, China and Pakistan are different challenges. Beijing pursues strategic influence through economic leverage and calibrated coercion; its behavior is transactional, disciplined and predictable. Rawalpindi’s drive toward perpetual conflict is institutional and ideological, producing persistent volatility. Conflating the two threats risks misallocating resources and misjudging intent.
Policy implications
If Pakistani strategy is to perpetuate friction rather than seek decisive victories, Indian policymakers must adopt strategies that reduce Pakistan’s asymmetric leverage. That requires:
– Sustained intelligence and precision capabilities to deter and disrupt proxy networks without escalating to nuclear thresholds.
– Diplomatic pressure and internationalizing the costs of state‑sponsored proxy activity, making deniability more costly.
– Political resilience and economic integration in border regions to reduce the local impact of cross‑border instability.
– A clear distinction in strategy and messaging between the immediate, destabilizing threat from Pakistan and the long‑term strategic competition with China.
Operational experience shows that predictable institutional patterns can be countered by consistent, integrated responses that raise the cost of continued friction while avoiding strategic overreach.
Conclusion
From the ridge at Kargil to repeated clashes along the LoC, the pattern is clear: Pakistan’s army prizes the option to continue conflict as a means of preserving its power. Recognizing this logic is the first step toward undermining it. India must combine deterrence, intelligence, targeted operations and diplomatic pressure to reduce Pakistan’s asymmetric advantages while avoiding the trap of misidentifying the nature of its threats.
[Shokin Chauhan first published a version of this piece on Substack.]
[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
