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The current stalemate between India and Pakistan should be viewed not as a pause between rounds of negotiation, but rather as part of a deliberate Indian strategy of disengagement. India will return to the negotiating table only after Pakistan dismantles, comprehensively and verifiably, its state-supported terrorist networks.

NEW DELHI—For decades, South Asia was locked in a perpetual cycle of conflict management: brief military clashes between India and Pakistan would be followed by de-escalation and the resumption of formal peace talks, which eventually gave way to another bout of conflict. But this pattern has now been broken. No high-level dialogue has taken place since 2016. Rather than some temporary diplomatic tantrum, this reflects a paradigm shift in Indian foreign policy, permanently altering the subcontinent’s security architecture.