EVENTS in May have underscored just how thin the margin for error has become in an India-Pakistan crisis. They also showed that the brakes that managed past crises are now dangerously worn.

The first brake in any interstate-crisis ought to be deterrence. Deterrence is meant to kick in once escalation reaches a rung where the costs of further action clearly outweigh any possible gains. But recent weeks have shown Indian elites to not just be sceptical of deterrence theory, but openly dismissive if not contemptuous of restraint, eager to celebrate rather than worry about the crossing of unfamiliar thresholds.

The second brake in South Asian crises has historically been outside intervention.

Efforts to downplay the fact notwithstanding, high-level US engagement ultimately did prove decisive in helping the two sides reach a ceasefire. But US Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio getting on the phone with both capitals at the eleventh hour was also enormously contingent.

Would the previous US administration have invested the same diplomatic capital in pulling India back from the brink? Will a future US administration read signals from the region correctly and in time? Consider, as well, that other possible crisis brokers barely featured. Beijing and Moscow sat on the sidelines; Riyadh and Tehran shuttled between capitals with little effect.

This shifts the burden for crisis management back to deterrence. But deterrence itself emerged from the May crisis battered andbruised, on atleastfourcounts.

One, the crisis demonstrated the existence of new rungs on the escalation ladder.

Drone and loitering munitions attacks now offer both sides a tempting avenue to inflict damage while claiming `calibration` or `restraint`. But each successful strike also normalises a rung that didn`t exist a decade ago, with little by way of past precedent to inform or guide future behaviour for peer-military competitors.

Two, Indian prevarication around the loss of aircraft is just one leg of its triumphalist framing of the four-day encounter as an unambiguous victory. It`s that precise framing that will be a catalyst in the next crisis. If the last crisis ended with spectacular net gains, why have any guardrails at all? Three, when escalation is dictated by public mood rather than verifiable intelligence, leaders lose the political space forget incentive to argue for restraint.

Regardless then of whether you are the incumbent or the opposition, each crisis risks becoming a test of your own politicalvirility rather than strategic necessity.

Fourth, crises that end in military stalemates run the risk of ensuring that players walk away having learnt the wrong lessons, focusing on where deterrence held, not where it didn`t.

This is not to say that Pakistan, and cooler heads in India, few as they may be, don`t have space to think differently.

Islamabad`s insistence on the need for dialogue offers one possible way to dial down the regional temperature. The appointment of a new NSA also suggests the potential for empowering a line of communication before the next crisis, to clarify important red lines and thresholds.

While ambiguity may deter in theory, in practice it only encourages reckless experimentation, as seen by India`s behaviour in May.

External actors, meanwhile, may want to reconsider the widening asymmetry that geopolitical arrangements have partly abetted. Pakistan`s smaller economy today means it has less to lose in an all-out con-flict, and more to gain in terms of reputation by inflicting even limited damage on a much larger neighbour.

India clearly feels emboldened by its relative weight.

Targeted efforts to give both players atangible stake in preserving peace are paramount. But they`re also no substitute for actual conflict resolution, which is the only long-term solution that can withstand pressures for a future war.

Finally, our neighbour`s domestic ecosystem has made clear that it serves to act as an accelerant, not a brake, once a crisis has begun. Brakes against both political and informational jingoism could check domestic incentives for reckless escalation. But those reforms would first require a sincere autopsy and frank gain-loss assessment of the May events.

Ultimately, another India-Pakistan crisis is now a question of when, not if. With traditional brakes eroding, there is an urgent imperative to ask what can be done to reinforce them in the short as well as medium term.

Else, the region risks not just climbing but vaulting an escalation ladder whose lower rungs seem to be cluttered with everything from drones to manufactured triumphs, and whose upper rungs, truthfully, offer no exits at all. • The wnter is an assistant professor of political science at Tufts University