The vast economic and demographic imbalance between India and Pakistan strongly favours New Delhi in any theoretical war between the two rivals, whether short or long. Yet, lessons from the ongoing war in Ukraine suggest that India’s military and industrial superiority over Pakistan alone may not guarantee rapid victory, particularly if external powers shift the balance or if warfare becomes attritional.

Tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad continue to rise, with both sides exchanging limited missile and drone strikes as well as aerial dogfights that have led to the destruction of a number of fighter jets. Both sides claim civilians have been killed in the escalating violence. However, analysts continue to assume that neither side wants to start what would be a costly and bloody full-scale war.

The differences between India and Pakistan are even more stark than those between Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s economy is nearly ten-times the size of Ukraine’s in nominal terms, and its population is three-times bigger.

But India, with a population nearing 1.5bn and a GDP of $3.7 trillion, draws Pakistan’s 250mn people and $375bn economy on nearly every metric. Per capita income in India is now nearly double that of Pakistan, and it spends eight- times more than Pakistan on defence – over $83bn annually compared to Pakistan’s $10.3bn, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

This structural gap—comparable to the 5:1 military spending advantage Russia holds over Ukraine in 2021—suggests India should dominate in a conventional war on paper.

"By default, India will win against Pakistan whether it's a short, limited war or a long total war. At this point, there's just no comparison on any relevant industrial or military metric," international affairs blogger Anatoly Karlin noted in a recent post.

Industrial production power

After the initial Blitzkrieg phase has passed, wars used to be won by simply outproducing the opposition.

India’s military-industrial complex (MIC) is significantly more advanced than Pakistan’s, supported by domestic production and large-scale procurement. Pakistan remains dependent on external suppliers, chiefly China but to a lesser extent Turkey, for military hardware, including drones, air defence systems, and precision-guided munitions.

But that advantage is not forever. Russian President Vladimir Putin  put the whole Russian economy onto a war footing early on and it has been significantly outproducing Ukraine, which has seen its economy wrecked.

That is starting to change though - thanks to the help of Ukraine’s European allies, which have been pouring investment and support into Ukraine’s defence sector under the so-called Danish model. Last year, Ukraine overtook Russia in the crucial drone production sector, which increased 500% y/y and now Ukraine produces 95% of its military supplies, according to Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin), although the most sophisticated equipment like high powered missiles and air defence systems are still imported.

China could play a similar crucial role in a theoretical long war between India and Pakistan. Chinese intervention could undermine India's advantage.

“India’s MIC crushes Pakistan’s, but 10% of China’s MIC working for Pakistan evens out the disbalance,” Karlin argued. Drones and autonomous defence systems, where China leads globally, could favour defensive operations and blunt Indian advances.

One of the biggest differences between the two conflicts is that while Ukraine has no nuclear missiles, both India and Pakistan have a nuclear arsenal of around some 170 warheads each. There is a reluctance to advance the ongoing conflict to this level, however, and mention of nuclear weapons being used has been noticeably absent from government discourse thus far.

Another lesson from the Ukraine conflict is that a country’s allies are very reluctant to get drawn into direct support or even arm their partners for victory for fear of a nuclear retaliation if the aggressor looks like losing the war. The result in Ukraine has been the Western policy of “escalation management” and supplying “some, but not enough” materiel to Kyiv to allow it to actually win the war.

This concept of escalation management is already ingrained in both New Delhi and Islamabad given both capital’s experience in recent years in periodic blow-ups over territorial issues and subsequent climb-downs.

As such, in the Asian clash, nuclear capabilities offer mutual deterrence but not decisive strategic superiority. While both are armed with nuclear missiles, they do not have enough missiles to offer a knockout blow – particularly in countries that are so big and so populous. Models estimate that nuclear use would cause civilian casualties of up to 2% of India’s population and as much as 7% of Pakistan’s, according to several academic and research studies, insufficient to force collapse, especially if Pakistan is underwritten by Chinese military and economic support.

One of the most cited sources is a 2019 study published in the journal Science Advances titled “Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe” by Toon, Robock, et al. That study estimated that a nuclear conflict involving 100 to 150 warheads could kill 50mn to 125mn people, primarily from direct blast effects and the collapse of urban infrastructure.

Despite the rhetoric and periodic flare-ups in Kashmir - that always seem to fizzle out - most defence experts see a total war scenario as unlikely due to nuclear risk, economic disruption, and international pressure. Although neither country can annihilate the other, the potential for large-scale death and long-term ecological damage are major incentives for both Islamabad and New Delhi to avoid a nuclear exchange, in classic “MAD” style.

Also, unlike the Ukraine conflict, manpower would not be a constraint. Ukraine in particular is running out of men, money and materiel, although recent aid from the EU has fixed the money problem for now and Bankova reports that the recruitment programme has also improved, but the prospective withdrawal of the Trump administration’s support will lead to a shortage of missiles. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently admitted in her ReArm Europe speech that Russia is outproducing all of the EU and Ukraine combined and that Europe will not be able to supply Ukraine properly without either US help or massive investment into defence.

India maintains a standing force of over 1.4mn troops, with a large reserve pool, while Pakistan has approximately 640,000 active personnel. Demographic trends, particularly among younger age groups, slightly improve Pakistan’s ratio, though not enough to shift the overall balance. Nevertheless, both countries can field far larger forces than either Russia or Ukraine and will be relatively evenly matched in numbers.

However, another lesson from the Ukraine conflict is that drone war has changed the face of modern warfare. Although Russia has maintained a 5:1 – 10:1 advantage in artillery fire, the classic decisive weapon of choice in infantry clashes, that advantage has been negated by lethal Ukrainian drones. 

Their kill-rate is so high, as much as 50%, that they make no-mans-land a killing zone. Even after a successful heavy Russian artillery bombardment, the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) can’t follow through with infantry advances to take new territory as Ukrainian drones fill the air like a summer swarm of mosquitos, killing anyone that puts their head above the trench. The upshot is instead of the 15-20km a day of advances an attacking force should enjoy, the gains are limited to 1-2km at best and then at extremely high casualty ratios. 

The two opposing forces quickly get locked into a war of attrition that some have likened to the bloody slaughter in the immobile trench warfare of WWI.

The more plausible risk lies in a limited conflict escalating unintentionally – a process that appears to already be underway. In such a case, China’s strategic calculus and willingness to extend support to Pakistan may determine whether India’s superior economy and military infrastructure can achieve a swift victory—or whether New Delhi is drawn into a prolonged, destabilising conflict.

China’s key role

China describes Pakistan as an “all-weather strategic cooperative partner.” It is Pakistan’s largest defence supplier and the chief financier of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which runs through territory claimed by India. But analysts say that although China could play a decisive role and is no friend of India’s, having its own border dispute with India, Beijing has little interest in using Pakistan as a proxy in a conflict.

In the wider East-West clash, Beijing has been working to tighten ties with fellow BRICS nations as it sees a greater threat from the Trump administration than local Emerging Market (EMs) rivals like India. To this end, India's Ministry of External Affairs confirmed a border disengagement agreement with China on disengagement and border patrols along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in October 2024 as the two rivals try to come to terms. In this context it is unlikely that Beijing would reinflame tensions with New Delhi by supplying Pakistan in a broader conflict on the subcontinent - at least as long as Trump remains in power.

Beijing, for its part, has consistently taken a cautiously neutral and diplomatically balanced position on the India-Pakistan conflict, particularly over Kashmir and military tensions. And, while China maintains a close strategic and military relationship with Pakistan, it has generally avoided overtly backing Islamabad in moments of high tension with India, seeking instead to present itself as a stabilising actor in South Asia.

Moreover, as part of the new transactional multipolar world model that is emerging to replace the US-led unipolar world model, a central tenant is non-interference in other country’s domestic politics. This is most clearly manifest in China’s continued abstentions in all the UN motions to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the UN voting despite the “no limits” partnership forged between Xi and Putin in Moscow in 2023. It is also a concept Beijing will want global powers and regional players such as India to observe should Beijing one day decide to move against Taiwan.

Putin and Xi laid out these non-intervention ideas in much more detail in an 8,000-word essay they released last year. Both leaders see the UN as the appropriate place to resolve conflicts like the Indo-Pakistan conflict, not the battlefield.

In previous clashes, Beijing typically urged both sides to resolve disputes through peaceful dialogue and bilateral negotiations. After major flare-ups such as the Pulwama-Balakot crisis in 2019, or border skirmishes in Kargil in 1999, China has called for de-escalation without assigning blame.