The past happenings have seen a flurry of headlines about Pakistani air strikes inside Afghanistan, border skirmishes, and the temporary closure of key trade crossings. Much of the international commentary has framed these developments as escalation, even aggression. That framing is not only incomplete, it is dangerous, because it fundamentally misreads what Pakistan is actually doing: re-establishing credible deterrence after years in which deterrence had collapsed.

In international-relations terms, deterrence works only when three conditions are met: capability, credibility, and communication. From 2021 to early 2025, Pakistan possessed the capability but had lost credibility. Terror groups based in Afghanistan learned, through painful experience for Islamabad, that they could strike inside Pakistan and suffer no meaningful consequences. Requests, evidence folders, and diplomatic notes were ignored. The red line kept moving. That is the textbook definition of deterrence failure.

Consider the broader trend: according to the latest Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) report, Pakistan recorded 1,099 terror-related incidents in 2024, up from 517 in 2023 - the first time attacks crossed the 1,000-mark since the Global Terrorism Index began tracking. At the same time, fatalities rose sharply: deaths from terrorism jumped from 748 in 2023 to 1,081 in 2024 - a 45% increase. Among these, Tehreek‑e‑Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is identified as the single deadliest group, responsible for roughly 52% of all terrorism-related deaths in 2024.

When suicide bombers killed Chinese engineers at Dasu in March 2024 and again in October 2025, and when more than 3,400 Pakistanis (mostly civilians) died in attacks planned from Afghan soil since 2021, the old policy of strategic restraint had become strategic self-harm. Restraint without credibility does not produce stability; it produces contempt and more body bags.

Imposing Costs On Adversary

So Pakistan did what deterrence theory prescribes when deterrence has broken down: it restored credibility by imposing costs that the adversary (the TTP and its Taliban hosts) could neither ignore nor absorb without pain. The airstrikes were not revenge; they were a deliberate signaling act that said, in the clearest possible language, “The era of cost-free aggression against Pakistan is over.”

This is sometimes called “cumulative deterrence”, a series of graduated, proportionate actions that, taken together, rebuild the adversary’s belief that further attacks will be met with escalating punishment. Pakistan waited years, warned repeatedly, shared intelligence, and, crucially, struck only known TTP facilities while issuing prior warnings through tribal channels to minimize civilian losses. These are not the actions of a state seeking war. They are the actions of a state methodically repairing a broken deterrent.

Securing The Corridors

A second imperative, protecting the economic corridors, also has a theoretical name: “escalation dominance in the grey zone”. Terror groups were waging low-intensity economic warfare by targeting CPEC projects and trade routes. By disrupting convoys and killing Chinese workers they sought to raise the cost of Beijing’s investment to an unacceptable level, forcing Pakistan either to abandon its pivot to geo-economics or to accept permanent insecurity. Pakistan’s response, securing the corridors even if it temporarily meant closing them, reasserted escalation dominance: the ability to control the level and domain of conflict and deny the adversary the ability to impose strategic defeat through sub-conventional means.

None of this is to suggest that Pakistan seeks permanent confrontation. On the contrary, the entire purpose of credible deterrence is to make diplomacy possible again. When an adversary knows that aggression will be punished, the rational choice becomes negotiation. That is why Islamabad continues to offer joint border mechanisms, biometric systems, intelligence-sharing protocols, and economic incentives. The door is wide open, but it is open from a position of strength, not supplication.

Realism And Coercive Diplomacy

Foreign observers sometimes miss the broader shift. Since 2022, Pakistan’s national-security leadership has been engaged in what scholars would call a “deterrence-rebuilding project” across multiple fronts: Balochistan, the former tribal areas, the eastern border, and now the west. Each operation has been calibrated to restore the adversary’s respect for Pakistani red lines without triggering an all-out war. This is not reactive lashing out; it is coercive diplomacy backed by limited, demonstrative use of force, exactly what realists from Schelling to Brodie argued is necessary when deterrence erodes.

The international community is right to care about Afghan humanitarian needs and regional stability. Pakistan shares those interests. But lasting stability cannot be built on a one-sided demand for restraint. When Kabul fails to honour its 2020 Doha commitment not to allow Afghan soil to be used for terrorism, and when the world remains silent, it effectively asks Pakistan to subsidize regional peace with the blood of its citizens. That is neither morally sustainable nor strategically sound.

A stable, prosperous Afghanistan remains in Pakistan’s core national interest. An Afghanistan that exports terrorism is an existential threat. The choice facing the Taliban authorities is therefore the same one deterrence theory has always posed: accommodate your neighbour’s red lines and enjoy peace and trade, or test them and discover that the neighbour can and will impose costs.

To partners in Washington, Brussels, Beijing, and Riyadh the message is equally clear: support mechanisms that restore Kabul’s own incentive to police its territory, and you will find Pakistan an enthusiastic partner for connectivity and integration. Insist on moral equivalence between victim and perpetrator, and you will prolong the very instability you claim to fear.

Pakistan is not spoiling for war. It is doing what every responsible state must do when deterrence collapses: rebuild it, painfully, proportionately, and credibly, so that war can be prevented. It is preventing one - through deterrence, not dominance; necessity, not nationalism; and a clear-eyed realist understanding that in an anarchic world, survival is not a choice, but an obligation. 

(The author is a visiting faculty at the Department of Politics and International Relations, International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI). She holds an MS in Strategic Studies from Air University Islamabad. Views expressed are personal. She can be reached at saranazeer2@gmail.com )