Line of (No) Control: A Plausibility Probe into Rasler's De-escalation Model using the India-Pakistan Case

At the core of the world's most pressing security challenges lie a multitude of protracted interstate rivalries and conflicts. . Amongst the literature that deals with the de-escalation of protracted conflicts, Karen Rasler's model stands out as an evolutionary framework. framework. The framework has held substantial explanatory power in understanding how protracted dyadic conflicts de-escalate and the necessary conditions that have allowed for de-escalation to occur in the 10 most prominent cases of dyadic conflicts in the modern age. However, it is evident that in many ways, the world has changed substantially in recent times and possibly, so has the fundamental nature of conflicts. The question that must be asked then is, does the 20-year-old theory still hold relevance? Can a theory that has worked well in explaining conflicts of the past, be robust enough to stand up to the changing contextual situations of today? It is this question I am attempting to explore through this paper by way of a plausibility probe. In order to probe the theory in today's day and age, I use one of the most the pertinent cases of a protracted dyadic conflict post World War II – the case study of India and Pakistan.