Pakistan's 'resolute response' in May 2025 conflict debunked notion of space for war in South Asia: military official

A military official from Pakistan has said that the country’s “resolute response” to India during the May 2025 conflict had effectively debunked the notion of space for war in South Asia.

Commander I Corps Lieutenant General Nauman Zakria made these remarks during a special session at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday.

In May 2025, a four-day conflict between Pakistan and India was sparked by an attack on tourists in occupied Kashmir, which New Delhi, without evidence, linked with Pakistan. Islamabad strongly denied responsibility while calling for a neutral investigation.

After New Delhi launched deadly air strikes in Punjab and Azad Kashmir on May 7, Pakistan said it downed five Indian planes in air-to-air combat, later raising the tally to eight. After tit-for-tat strikes on each other’s airbases, it took American intervention on May 10 for both sides to finally reach a ceasefire.

Speaking at the Shangri-La conference, Lieutenant General Zakria said strategic stability in South Asia remained shaped by nuclear deterrence, conventional asymmetry, enduring political tensions, and unresolved territorial and ideological disputes between India and Pakistan.

And despite the complexities of great power contestation, China constituted a constructive and stabilising factor, contributing to strategic balance, regional connectivity and economic cooperation, he added.

Lt Gen Zakria said the May 2025 conflict demonstrated Pakistan’s effective multi-domain operations, which were enabled by tri-service synergy, integrated use of cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, space-based capabilities and synergetic information manoeuvre, generating cross-domain effects.

“Pakistan’s resolute response has effectively debunked the notion of space for war in South Asia,” he said.

“Postconlict dynamics have further constrained the prospects for conventional war. However, continued Indian militarisation coupled with persistent adversarial rhetoric and absence of robust crisis management mechanisms continue to undermine regional stability,” he added.

In this evolving environment, he said, South Asia’s strategic equilibrium was increasingly contingent upon escalation control and effective crisis communication frameworks.

“Navigating the complex challenges of a fast-transforming geopolitical environment warrants a shift from competition-only postures to cooperative risk management across multiple domains, while remaining committed to upholding international norms,” he stressed.

Firstly, he said, states must prioritise responsible governance of emerging technologies. “Technological innovation cannot be divorced from ethical responsibility and strategic accountability.”

States should work towards internationally accepted norms regarding the military use of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cyber operations and space technologies. Human oversight must remain central in decisions involving the use of force, especially in systems with strategic implications, he said.

Lt Gen Zakria added that confidence-building measures, transparency mechanisms and technical dialogues among states were essential to reduce misunderstanding and prevent destabilising arms races.

Secondly, he said, institutionalised crisis management mechanisms and strategic communication channels needed to be strengthened, he said.

“Even during periods of geopolitical rivalry, dialogue must never collapse. History repeatedly demonstrates that strategic stability is preserved not only through deterrence but through communication as well.”

Thirdly, he said, nations needed to collaborate in codifying norms regarding space testing, prohibitions on attacks on civilian infrastructure, and human oversight requirements for autonomous weapon systems.

“Norms do not discourage competitiveness, but they do set boundaries that make deterrence more calculable.

“International law and multilateral institutions must be adaptive to emerging realities. Technological transformation is outpacing our existing institutional and legal frameworks,” he said.

Lt Gen Zakria said that strengthening global cooperation on cyber governance, responsible AI development, space security, digital ethics and information integrity was imperative to maintaining the geostrategic equilibrium.

“No country, regardless of its size or technological sophistication, can manage the emerging multifaceted risks alone. The challenges we face are transnational by nature and therefore require collaborative responses,” he asserted.

Moreover, strategic stability was not only about military capability but also about societal endurance, he pointed out.

“Countries must strengthen cyber resilience, protect critical infrastructure, improve digital and technical literacy and build institutional credibility.

“Public trust is a strategic asset. Resilient societies are far less vulnerable to external manipulation and internal destabilisation through misinformation, polarisation, and technological disruption,” he said.

At its core, strategic stability was ultimately about responsible statecraft, he added.

“Technology itself is not inherently destabilising. But the real challenge lies in how technologies are governed, integrated, and employed. Human judgement, political wisdom, and international cooperation for the greater good remain indispensable.

“We must resist the temptation for the greater good. We must resist the temptation to view every technological breakthrough solely through the lens of competition and militarisation, rather as a function of balance between innovation and responsibility, national security and global stability, strategic competition and collective survival,” he said.

Lt Gen Zakria added, “Let us remember that peace and stability have never been involuntary outcomes of technological progression. They have always depended on political responsibility, strategic restraint and sustained international engagement.”

Earlier in his address, he said the operationalisation of the emerging domains alongside the legacy domains had significantly complicated the strategic stability landscape.

“Rapid advances in AI, autonomous systems, cyber capabilities, quantum technologies, and multi-domain operations are transforming military decision making, command and control structures, and strategic competition, while simultaneously introducing new vulnerabilities, risks of miscalculations, attribution challenges, and unintended escalation,” he said.

As states, societies, and critical infrastructures become increasingly dependent on interconnected technological ecosystems, the erosion of predictability and compression of decision-making timelines were fundamentally reshaping the nature of inter-state conflict and strategic deterrence, he added.

Lt Gen Zakria said the information was becoming increasingly fragmented, as digital platforms, AI-generated content, and disinformation campaigns eroded trust, distorted narratives and compressed decision-making timelines.

“In this evolving landscape, the control of information and data integrity has emerged as a critical determinant of strategic stability, alongside conventional military balance,” he stressed.

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