This Ceasefire Will Not Hold – Because India and Pakistan Were Never Meant to Coexist: On May 16, 2025, India and Pakistan agreed – yet again – to a ceasefire along the Line of Control in Kashmir. The language was familiar. So were the rituals: hotlines activated, diplomats deployed, photo ops arranged.
And once again, the usual chorus of analysts and think tankers emerged to declare this a “positive development,” a “step toward de-escalation,” or even, God help us, a “ray of hope.” But the truth is far more sobering: this ceasefire, like the dozen before it, is a mirage. It is not a harbinger of peace. It is a pause, born of exhaustion, political necessity, and international pressure – a tactical breath before the next inevitable exhalation of violence.
The Kashmir War Isn’t Over
This is not cynicism. It is realism. And if we are honest, it is also clarity. Because the conflict between India and Pakistan is not simply about territory. It is about incompatible national identities that cannot be reconciled without one state fundamentally repudiating its founding purpose.
The problem is not Kashmir. Kashmir is the symptom. The disease is deeper.
To understand why this ceasefire will fail, we must return to the moment of partition in 1947, when the British Raj – decaying, depleted, and desperate to leave – abandoned the subcontinent to two emerging states. But they were not merely two states. They were two mutually exclusive civilizational projects.
India, for all its contradictions and flaws, has long insisted it is a secular, multiethnic, and multi-confessional republic. Pakistan, by contrast, was founded explicitly as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims – a state forged out of the belief that Muslims and Hindus could not coexist in a single polity. India’s national identity is tethered to unity amid diversity; Pakistan’s to the safeguarding of Islamic identity through separation. Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority princely state to accede to India, became the living contradiction of both. And it is a contradiction that neither side can allow to resolve on the other’s terms.
For India, Kashmir is the litmus test of its secular promise – proof that a Muslim-majority state can thrive inside a Hindu-majority nation. To relinquish it would be to concede that the secular project has failed, that Pakistan was right all along. For Pakistan, Kashmir is the unfinished business of partition, the wound left open by a Hindu-majority state holding dominion over a Muslim-majority land. To let it go would be to admit that the two-nation theory was a strategic error, that the state was built on a myth.
In short: for either state to compromise on Kashmir is to deny the reason for its own existence.
This is the tragic engine that drives the conflict. It is not about borders, rivers, or insurgencies. It is about identity – and identity, unlike territory, does not admit easy negotiation. When political projects are rooted in irreconcilable myths of nationhood, conflict becomes not the failure of diplomacy but the natural state of affairs.
And so the ceasefires come. And so they break.
This most recent one is no different. The trigger was another grisly episode in an already long and bloody ledger: a Pakistan-based group staged an attack in India’s Jammu region in April, killing a dozen civilians and four soldiers. India responded with drone strikes deep into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, hitting what it claimed were militant staging areas. Artillery duels followed. Dozens of civilians were displaced. Then came the hotline calls, the diplomatic appeals, the American pressure. Ceasefire.
But this was not peace. It was a mutually agreed timeout. Delhi wants to avoid a two-front crisis as it manages Chinese pressure in Ladakh. Islamabad, reeling from inflation, political instability, and the reactivation of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan insurgency, cannot afford an open war. And Washington – focused on Taiwan, the Red Sea, and whatever is left of Ukraine—is desperate to keep a lid on South Asia.
But desperation is not strategy. And ceasefires are not solutions.
Indeed, what this latest truce reveals is how brittle and superficial the whole framework of Indo-Pakistani “conflict management” has become. Everyone knows the pattern. Everyone plays their role. But no one believes the underlying issue will be resolved. Because it won’t – not until one or both states fundamentally redefine who they are. And that is not going to happen anytime soon.
Pakistan cannot abandon its claim to Kashmir without abandoning the very reason it was created. But it cannot achieve that claim without risking nuclear war. India, for its part, cannot allow secession without triggering centrifugal forces in Punjab, Assam, and beyond. And so, Delhi doubles down. Kashmir is no longer just a security problem – it is the symbol of India’s assertion of sovereignty and, under the BJP, of a new muscular nationalism that no longer bothers to veil its power behind Nehruvian idealism.
There is, in short, no middle ground.
Su-30 Fighter India. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Some in Washington still dream of a grand bargain – something like the Oslo Accords with a Himalayan twist. They believe that backchannel diplomacy, economic incentives, or confidence-building measures can dissolve seventy-five years of blood, trauma, and myth. But this is strategic delusion. Clausewitz had it right: war is a continuation of politics by other means. But in South Asia, the politics themselves are locked in a logic of tragic antagonism. As long as the ideological foundations of both states remain untouched, Kashmir will remain the arena through which national identity is performed and defended.
What Happens Now for India and Pakistan?
First, the U.S. must abandon the illusion that it can “solve” Kashmir. It can’t. This is not Dayton or Camp David. There are no maps to be redrawn. The best Washington can do is prevent escalation, enforce deterrence stability, and stop Pakistan from leveraging its China ties to extract concessions through nuclear blackmail.
Second, policymakers must recognize that there is no moral equivalence here. One side – Pakistan – has built and maintained a state-sponsored ecosystem of jihadist proxies. The other – India – has its own sins, yes, but it remains a democracy with functioning institutions and a strategic interest in regional stability. That matters. In an era of multipolarity, the United States cannot afford to remain neutral out of habit. It must choose partnerships that reflect both interest and order.
Third, the myth that Kashmir is somehow a solvable “issue” must die. It is not an issue. It is a wound at the heart of two competing national projects. The best outcome is not peace in the conventional sense – but a long, cold truce underwritten by deterrence, economic growth, and the fading passions of younger generations. Not resolution. Containment.
This is not an optimistic vision. But it is a realistic one. And in international affairs, realism is not pessimism. It is the refusal to mistake wishful thinking for analysis.
The guns may have fallen silent this week. But they will fire again. Not because anyone wants them to. But because the war never ended. It merely changes shape – sometimes open, sometimes covert, always present.
Until India and Pakistan become something other than what they were born to be, this will remain a region suspended in tragedy.
Not peace. Not war. Just the long shadow of 1947.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. Andrew is now a Contributing Editor to 19FortyFive, where he writes a daily column. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.
