Daily Insight: Wednesday 27 February 2019: India and Pakistan

News

There are signs of potential hostilities between Pakistan and India getting out of control. These two countries have had several military exchanges over their history, three of these qualify as wars. The latest news is that the military action of the past 24 hours has disrupted commercial airline traffic significantly. Thai has cancelled flights to Europe. Emirates has canceled flights to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Oman Air also suspended flights to Pakistan. Several Indian airline flights have also been canceled that took these flights to the north west part of India. Air Canada has suspended flights to India.

Analysis

Of growing concern has to be the potential of “trigger happy” behavior. As we can see from the reaction by commercial airlines, they fully expect the risk of escalation to be quite possible. Unfortunately, the history of the two belligerents is such that pride, and hubris can easily escalate the conflict. Since both are nuclear powers, any escalation can lead to what has been unthinkable. How does one stop this slide?