Performative Sovereignty Versus Performative Nationalism: Hydraulic Securitization and Abeyance of the Indus Waters Treaty

Indus Waters Treaty (IWT, 1960) survived four major wars, decades of cross‐border militancy, and 56 years of parliamentary skepticism in India. However, it could not survive the performative securitization sequence initiated by three terror attacks, that is, Uri (2016), Pulwama (2019), and Pahalgam (2025), leading to IWT's abeyance in 2025. Conventional securitization frameworks become incompatible here as dam construction and treaty management operate as two analytically distinct phenomena within the same securitization process. Two analytically distinct processes are identified: (a) performative sovereignty for India, where authority over treaty suspension was not preexisting but actively produced, and (b) performative nationalism for Pakistan, whereby existential water framing externalizes domestic distributive grievances onto an external adversary. The paper employs discourse analysis of 82 documents related to IWT (1960–2025) in India, official speech acts, and Geographic Information System (GIS) vulnerability mapping of dam concentration and proximate population centres. The analysis demonstrates that (a) the performative sovereignty/nationalism distinction explains the asymmetry in securitizing agency that conventional securitization theory cannot account for with its uniform speech act model; (b) GIS spatial analysis reveals dam induced vulnerabilities to be spatially concentrated over 300 million people in specific dam‐proximate clusters; and (c) Pakistan's Punjab–Sindh water disparities function as the domestic structural condition that makes performative nationalism both politically necessary and strategically available. A hydraulic security framework is proposed through the integration of interstate deterrence, climate, and militant vulnerability, with performative politics. Analysis derives two crucial imperatives: a threshold principle on aggregate dam capacity to prevent hydrological saturation and non‐extractive protective infrastructure to address climate‐induced vulnerabilities without intensifying securitization.