“The problem with limited war between nuclear powers is that what is limited for one may be total for the other.” – Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organisations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons

When the Indian Mirage aircraft crossed the Line of Control in February to strike alleged militant targets in the city of Balakot, Pakistan’s Swift aerial retaliation marked a dramatic moment in South Asia’s military history. It was the first time since 1971 that both air forces were engaged in direct aerial combat. This short but intense exchange could be seen years later by a far more destructive clash in May 2025, which made one thing clear: India’s Cold Start Doctrine, once seen as a way to punish Pakistan without sparking a nuclear war, may be more of an illusion than a strategy.

India’s Cold Start logic underestimates Pakistan’s Strategic behaviour.

The Cold Start Doctrine was designed by the Indian policymakers in the early 2000s after the failure of the Sundarji Doctrine. Also, as a reaction against Pakistan’s continued employment of non-state actors as proxies and following the 2001 parliament attacks and months-long slow mobilisation during Operation Parakram, Cold Start became a strategy to provide fast, shallow strikes across the border. This led to the creation of Integrated battle groups (IBGs), aiming to punish Pakistan before it could build up a massive conventional or nuclear counterattack.

In response to the Indian Cold Start Doctrine (CSD), Pakistan had introduced its NASR Missile (Hataf-IX) in 2011, a tactical nuclear weapon with a range of approximately 70 kilometres. The clear aim was to deter the Indian IBG intrusion by decreasing Pakistan’s Nuclear threshold. In doctrinal terms, this was the development of full-spectrum deterrence meant to repel both strategic and tactical threats.

Although India never officially activated the Cold Start but in the Balakot strike in 2019, it carried out its strategic signature rapid retaliatory strikes against non-state forces in Pakistan. Instead of freezing the escalations, Pakistan retaliated within 24 hours with an airstrike that saw an Indian MiG-21 and Su-30MKI being shot down and the MiG pilot being captured. The incident was constrained diplomatically, but the military exchange cast genuine doubts regarding the assumption that limited strikes would prevent Pakistani retaliatory action.

Barely disheartened, Pakistan’s response indicated a willingness to reply in kind to any intrusion into its territory, conventional or nuclear. India’s effort to redefine escalation levels without precipitating war in its totality did not pass unchallenged, thus revealing the doctrinal difference between India’s intention and Pakistani perception.

Pakistan has demonstrated that it will respond to any small intrusion with tit for tat and sometimes escalating force.

The recent clashes in May between India and Pakistan were more representative. Provoked by a savage terror strike in Pahalgam that claimed 26 civilian lives, India initiated Operation Sindoor, precision missile and drone attacks against purported militant camps in Pakistan-held Kashmir. India’s strategy was transparent: swift retaliation without occupation, another Cold Start-type template.

Pakistan, though, counter-attacked by downing 6 Indian aircraft and with Operation Bunyan-un-Marsoos, firing its own artillery and air attacks against Indian military positions in Jammu and Kashmir. Drone warfare, artillery, and threatening air tactics resulted in scores of military and civilian fatalities. Before the war subsided through backchannel diplomacy, both sides had pressed red lines and demonstrated how fast a limited war could turn out to be anything but a wider and more destructive conflict.

Both the 2019 and 2025 standoffs reveal that India’s Cold Start logic underestimates Pakistan’s Strategic behaviour. Pakistan has demonstrated that it will respond to any small intrusion with tit for tat and sometimes escalating force. This shows that Cold Start is not a guaranteed policy; it is a gamble that relies on the enemy holding back. Second, with NASR tactical nuclear weapons in the region, any miscalculation of battlefield dynamics will bring on disastrous repercussions. During crises, it is not doctrines that function, but flesh-and-blood players under stress, and where the environment is as volatile as in this region, the margin for error is uncomfortably broad.

During crises, it is not doctrines that function, but flesh-and-blood players under stress.

South Asia cannot afford to play warfighting doctrines like intellectual games. Balakot and the May 2025 skirmishes establish that limited war, in the case of India and Pakistan, is unstable by its very nature. Instead of depending upon doctrines that torture the nuclear red line, both nations need to invest in escalation control systems, trustworthy communication networks, and mutually agreed red lines. Cold Start might have vowed controlled escalation, but in practice, it invites uncontrolled danger. The cold reality is that no one’s a winner when deterrence does not work, and South Asia can be one crisis away from learning that the hard way.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.