When India abrogated Article 370 in August 2019, it claimed that the Kashmir issue was over. For the Indian government, it became something purely internal, part of regular administration like any other Indian state. But now, more than five years later, that claim doesn’t hold up as easily, not because of outside pressure or new indigenous armed struggle, but because of how India itself is shifting its policies. After the 2025 conflict with Pakistan, two major steps made things more complicated. One, Indian leaders announced that any future attack on Indian soil would be treated as an act of war. Two, they put the Indus Waters Treaty on hold, which ended decades of steady water cooperation between the two countries. These moves were meant to look strong and firm. But strangely, they might be doing the opposite of what was intended. They’re making it more likely that Kashmir ends up back on the international radar. A dispute India says is settled could come back into global focus because of the very policies it’s now putting in place.
The Indian military doctrine post-2025 was blunt: no matter the attribution, ‘any attack’ in the future would be considered an act of war. This pronouncement sharply narrows the space for ambiguity, restraint, or quiet diplomacy. In a region where proximity, opacity, and short missile flight times define the strategic environment, such rigidity raises the likelihood of uncontrolled escalation. The 2025 conflict had already seen both countries firing missiles across international borders, with the battlefield spilling beyond the traditional Kashmir theatre. Should another incident occur, even if not rooted in the Kashmir dispute, the conflict could easily spiral into one that draws Kashmir—geographically and politically—back into the center of global attention.
This risk becomes even more serious with India’s move to put the Indus Waters Treaty on hold. The treaty, signed in 1960 with the help of the World Bank, had been one of the few steady things in India–Pakistan ties. It had survived wars, tensions, and political changes. But in early 2025, India decided to suspend cooperation, saying it had security concerns and pointing to possible misuse of cross-border projects. Pakistan reacted strongly. For Islamabad, any threat to the Indus system is a major red line. More than 90 percent of its agriculture depends on these waters, and most of them come from Indian-administered Kashmir. But it’s not just about farming anymore. Both countries are now trying to build up their digital infrastructure—like smart cities, cloud services, and big data centers. These centers use a lot of water every day just to keep cool. So if water becomes a political tool, it doesn’t just hurt food production—it can also weaken the systems both countries rely on to grow their future economies.
Taken together, India’s escalating security doctrine and its challenge to the IWT create a paradox. On one hand, New Delhi seeks to seal Kashmir off from international discussion, insisting it is a resolved internal matter. On the other hand, its post-2025 actions make it increasingly likely that any significant event—whether military, environmental, or legal—will bring Kashmir back onto the global radar. And this revival would be led not by external pressure, but by the structural consequences of India’s own policy trajectory.
These tensions are surfacing at a moment when India’s geopolitical standing is no longer as insulated as it once was. For years, its perceived utility as a counterweight to China had allowed it to avoid sustained criticism from the West, even as it restructured Kashmir’s legal status and curtailed civil liberties in the region. But the international climate is shifting. India’s assertion of strategic autonomy, marked by its refusal to join sanctions against Russia, and its surge in Russian oil purchases (now exceeding 2.1 million barrels per day), has raised concerns in Washington and European capitals. Russia continues to supply more than 38% of India’s defense imports, and its diplomatic support for Moscow during the Ukraine war has further highlighted India’s divergence from Western expectations.
Donald Trump, now back in office, has made uncharacteristically direct comments about India’s geopolitical positioning. “They can take their dead economies down together,” he said recently said, referring to Russia and India’s deepening ties. Trump also revived his earlier Kashmir mediation proposal, offering to help India and Pakistan “arrive at a solution, even after a thousand years.” Though New Delhi rejected the suggestion, it signaled that Kashmir is once again a permissible subject in international discourse. The U.S. State Department even referenced Kashmir in a post-conflict press briefing—something Indian diplomacy had worked for years to prevent.
Strategic literature is also beginning to reflect these doubts. While India is often promoted as a vital node in the Indo-Pacific, analysts have increasingly described it as underbalancing China. Its economic growth remains fine—on track to surpass Germany’s GDP in nominal terms—but its capacity to project power or offer a credible counterweight to Beijing remains constrained. India lacks the alliance structures, institutional heft, and diplomatic consistency needed to function as a fully committed strategic peer to the West. This limits its ability to command unquestioned support, and it reduces the diplomatic cover it once enjoyed—particularly on issues as sensitive as Kashmir.
This changing global mood intersects uneasily with India’s hardening posture at home. Its deterrent doctrine and suspension of the IWT may be aimed at preventing conflict, but they may also have the opposite effect. In the event of a future standoff or military exchange, both Kashmir and water would be impossible to isolate. Given that most of the Indus system originates in the Kashmir region, and that any future military incident would likely involve airspace or territory linked to the Line of Control, the internationalization of Kashmir is structurally built into these scenarios.
India’s effort to finalize the Kashmir dispute through unilateral action may therefore be reaching its limits. The doctrines it has adopted and the external alignments it is pursuing are not closing the issue—they are reopening it. And unlike 2019, when global criticism was muted, the next flashpoint may find India without the strategic cover it once relied on. Kashmir may not be at the heart of India’s next crisis. But when the crisis comes, Kashmir is likely to return to the world’s agenda—not as a relic of unresolved history, but as a nuclear, hydrological, and geopolitical flashpoint shaped by India’s own red lines.
Author: Syeda Saba Israr is currently enrolled as a PhD scholar in International Relations. She has previously served as a Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, for over five years. Her academic background and on-ground familiarity with the region allow her to offer a well-informed and nuanced perspective on the evolving dynamics of the Kashmir conflict.
