Contested Restraint: Compellence, Deterrence and the Pahalgam Crisis

Abstract

The April-May 2025 Pahalgam crisis offers an insight into the dynamic crisis behaviour of a nuclearised South Asia. Against this backdrop, the study analyses India’s compellence strategy of limited-precision strikes pitched against Pakistan’s full-spectrum deterrence posture. Drawing on Schelling’s coercion theory and the stability-instability paradox, it argues that India’s attempt at behavioural change through preventive strikes was counterbalanced by Pakistan’s calibrated retaliation, which restored deterrence and constrained further escalation. This doctrinal divergence narrows the shared space for interpreting escalation limits and increases the risk of miscalculation in future crises. Structured survey data gathered in the article support the central argument regarding the limited success of compellence vis-à-vis the relative effectiveness of deterrence. It signifies the heightened strategic risks arising from compressed decision timelines and multi-domain engagements within an environment shaped by drones, cyber tools, and precision munitions. The crisis also highlights the significant role of the U.S. mediation and the absence of bilateral crisis-management mechanisms, since divergent post-crisis interpretations and takeaways by strategic communities of two dyads have increased the probability of future instability. The article concludes that the crisis reflects a pattern of ‘contested restraint,’ where escalation is managed but remains fragile, underscoring the need for clearer signalling and more robust crisis-management mechanisms.