Pakistan–India relations and the Kashmir dispute: A historical and contemporary analysis

Abstract

The work is a synthesis of archival and secondary sources that follow shifting conflict patterns through the key periods of major transformations in these conflicts: early post-1947 wars, the 1971 redefinition of regional alignments, the insurgency and cross-border confrontations of the 1989-1999, and the nuclearized deterrence setting of the post-2000, and it incorporates current trends on trade, water politics, and securitization. To supplement the qualitative narrative, the paper provides a small scale (illustrative) quantitative model, which estimates the relationship between bilateral trade, interstate incidents, and conflict intensity (1975-2020) and the relationship between trade volume and incident frequency is statistically significant when accounting for military spending and political regime type. The main factors that perpetuate the conflict are stated to be disputed identity narratives, strategic rivalry, weak institutions of conflict management, and periodic domestic politicization. The research ends with some policy suggestions comprising confidence-building, incremental dispute management (water and trade cooperation), track-II engagement, the anticipation of multilateral mediation and institutionalization of crisis communication to mitigate the risks of escalation under the influence of nuclearization. Conclusions and recommendations to any subsequent empirical research, particularly terms of subnational incident data, qualitative process tracing of key crises, and more substantive econometric identification, are addressed.