India-Pakistan conflict: Why both sides lost this round

Despite the chest-thumping and claims of victory, both countries are counting the costs of their latest clash.

- Ravi Velloor

For most of May, the conflict headlines in Asia centred around the 96-hour clash between India and Pakistan, following New Delhi's punitive strikes on its neighbour, which it blamed for a terrorist attack in Kashmir.

After the Trump administration claimed it had intervened to stop the conflict for fear it would escalate into a nuclear exchange, phrases like "nuclear flashpoint" and "world's most dangerous trouble spot" have emerged all over again as descriptors for the sub-continent.

Inevitably, given the animus between the two countries that emerged as independent nations in 1947 when British rule ended, there has also been much discussion since on who "won" the war.

Pakistan's Day 1 success in downing some Indian planes, which New Delhi no longer denies, has spawned tremendous interest in the Chinese fighters and missiles deployed by the Pakistani military. Conversely, there is much speculation that India's mixed Russian-French arsenal, particularly the Rafales that India recently acquired at enormous cost, had performed underwhelmingly.

Less noticed was that the Indians seemed to have grasped what went wrong initially, swiftly adjusted their electronics and tactics and whatever else had contributed to the initial wobble, and hit back with a ferocity that prompted the Pakistanis to pick up the phone and discuss a ceasefire. This led to the "pause" in hostilities, which has now held for three weeks and counting.

In the tide of jingoism that has engulfed both nations, each has claimed victory. Pakistan elevated its army chief's rank from general to field marshal in an act of triumphalism. Across the border, a beaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India will no longer differentiate between the masterminds of terror and the government that sponsors it, nor would it be deterred by Islamabad's nuclear arsenal.