Q contends that no India–Pakistan war will ever last more than a few days, because neither side wants the destruction a long one brings. The region, he says, will get “bouts of clashes every few years”, and he called it izzat maxing.
Four days
Kargil, 1999, ran two months, and India kept its aircraft on its own side of the Line of Control the whole time. Balakot, 2019, was a day and a dogfight. Sindoor, May 2025, was four days, and on the fourth Washington and Riyadh were on the phone to both capitals. Each side claims it stopped when it chose to, and each side stopped.
The stopgaps are nuclear, then American, then Gulf: Washington does not want a nuclear crisis, and the Gulf pays Pakistan’s bills and buys Desi labour. Q’s model of the next war, days of strikes and then a ceasefire, is also how India’s deputy army chief described Sindoor afterwards: staying ahead on the escalation ladder while preventing a full-scale war.
Q claims the alliances shone through in Sindoor, that Turkey and China stood up and accordingly there was pressure to deescalate? Nobody needs an ally for four days however one seems to need them for the fifth.
1971: the ally that turned up and the one that didn’t