BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS

APLN member Sadia Tasleem examined how Pakistan’s experience during the May 2025 conflict with India exposed the limits and risks of nuclear deterrence, and how this has shifted the country’s strategic focus toward conventional military power.

The world is witnessing a renewed interest in nuclear weapons. From nuclear modernization plans in the United States, to growing anxieties in Europe and East Asia about the reliability of the US security umbrella, to discussions in South Korea, Canada, and elsewhere about acquiring nuclear weapons, the thinking about nuclear weapons appears to be shifting.

But Pakistan shows something different and unexpected.

In the aftermath of a short but limited three-day war with India in May 2025, Pakistan’s strategic elite had to face a hard truth: Nuclear weapons have limits. They do not prevent every crisis or escalation of military conflict, and they do not deter coercion. This is a reality that nuclear weapon states like the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom have also experienced but rarely acknowledged publicly.

Evidence for this realization comes from how Pakistan commemorated the first anniversary of the military confrontation this May (the Marka-e-Haq) and the anniversary of the day in May 1998 when Pakistan conducted its first nuclear tests (the Youm-e-Takbeer). Those commemorations played down the importance of nuclear weapons, in part because the May 2025 conflict highlighted the limitations of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and the risks it can impose during a crisis.

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