At #INC2026 in Islamabad, SVI set four. My short answers: 1. Compellence. "Bharat cannot compel Pakistan." Turning an unverified allegation into war, while reserving the decision to strike, doesn't work. 2. Limited war. "The defender also has a vote, and Pakistan can again cast it decisively." Restraint is responsible statecraft, but "restraint is not endlessly renewable." 3. Entanglement. India's dual-capable missiles, precision strike, canisterisation, MIRVs, missile defence and sea-based forces are converging. "That is a shift from stability by fear to instability by confidence." 4. Technology. BrahMos brings all three risks together. "Radar cannot reveal payload or intent." Meaningful human control must stay central to military AI. The conclusion: "South Asia is a nuclear flashpoint and here the true enemy is the belief in useful war." Full speech in the reply. I first set out the BrahMos argument in my CISS essays and the wider frame in my FRS paper (link below). #SouthAsia #NuclearDeterrence Reply 1: Full session (my speech from 27:28): youtube.com/watch?v=GAylfaPx… Reply 2: FRS paper: frstrategie.org/web/document…

India's nuclear navy is the quiet escalation in South Asia. In June 2026, @SIPRIorg estimated 12 Indian warheads deployed at sea for "occasional deterrence patrols." That estimate is too low, and it arrives seven years late. Modi announced INS Arihant's first deterrence patrol in November 2018. A concealed, ready launch platform means something different when it sits beside counterforce ambitions, missile defence and talk of pre-emption. NCA Adviser Lt Gen (Retd) Mazhar Jamil told IISS on 13 October that continuous at-sea deterrence further weakens the credibility of India's no-first-use pledge, and that unannounced SLBM tests raise the risks of misperception and escalation. May 2025 showed there is no safe band of war on land or in the air. There is none at sea. In the Subcontinent, the true enemy is the delusion that war can be kept safely on a lower rung. As Field Marshal Asim Munir put it, there is no space for war in a nuclearised environment. My piece in @dawn_com: dawn.com/news/2039724/the-nu… #SouthAsia #NuclearDeterrence #IndianOcean #SSBN

The onus of breakdown will be on the Bharat strategy of hegemony.

Ours are short wars, but short is not safe. India may start a crisis; it cannot reserve the response, escalation or termination. "It's an illusion that war can be started low, kept low, and stopped on command." #INC2026

Crimson Tide: in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself. In a nuclear dyad: the real enemy is the belief that war can be kept safely on a lower rung. That is the belief that makes the unthinkable look controllable. youtu.be/7_7Khp85YVA?si=6ijb…

Pakistan at the UN First Committee (9 Oct): India launched an “unprovoked military assault” last year and now claims a right to strike “at a time of its choosing.” Pakistan’s delegate: “The notion that a limited conventional war can be fought and contained under a nuclear overhang is a dangerous delusion.” This isn't restraint — it’s a recipe for catastrophe between two nuclear-armed states. The world can't afford India’s “new normal” of strikes under a nuclear shadow. #PakistanAtUN #FirstCommittee #NuclearOverhang #SouthAsia #Disarmament #UNGA81 #StrategicStability #Pakistan

What is being lost is not stability in one theatre. It is a shared expectation of what states will not do. AI, hypersonics and offensive cyber compress crises from days to minutes. A rules-based order that bends for partners and binds everyone else is not an order. The choice is not order versus disorder. It is an order designed by a few, or one negotiated by many. Two alternates, for different rooms: For those who share rules language more readily than arsenal arithmetic: A rules-based order must apply its rules to everyone, or it is not an order at all. INF is gone. New START has lapsed. Exemptions keep being granted for convenience. The system is teaching a simple lesson: restraint is for the weak. 2/2 Read “On the disorder between orders”: thenews.pk/print/1441198-the…