Author: Brigadier Arun Sahgal
Publication: Tehelka
Date: August 12, 2006
URL: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main18.asp?filename=Ne081206essayp18.asp
Introduction: India needs to call Pakistan's
bluff on the nuclear card if it is to stop being seen as taking the soft option
against cross-border terror
Although India's decision-making apparatus
will not admit this, it is quite evident that New Delhi's threshold of tolerance
for the proxy war waged by Pakistan remains a bottomless pit. The July 11
multiple bombings in Mumbai were the latest in a series of terrorist attacks
aimed at provoking communal riots and demoralising the Indian State and its
overall security apparatus.
Last year, bomb attacks were carried out on
Diwali crowds in a South Delhi market for maximum impact and were, in turn,
a sequel to bomb blasts in Varanasi and Nagpur. All these terrorist attacks
have been linked directly or indirectly to Pakistan- sponsored terrorist groups.
They have occurred despite General Pervez Musharraf's January 2004 promise
that Pakistani territory would not be used for terrorist training or for perpetrating
such acts. These empty promises are part of many similar assurances made previously
- during Operation Parakram in January 2002, again in June 2002 and once more
in April 2003.
Traditionally, India is wont to exercise only
soft options. With regard to the Mumbai blasts, New Delhi has merely 'condemned'
the incident. To show its annoyance, it has feebly and half-heartedly stalled
the peace process, but has vowed in the same breath to continue with it shortly.
The foreign secretaries of the two countries are to talk on the sidelines
of the saarc Council of Ministers meeting in Dhaka in early August, and fresh
dates for a formal secretary-level meeting to assess the peace process are
expected to emerge from this interaction.
Pakistan's continuous harping on the provision
of evidence, while not likely to cut much ice with India, is in reality aimed
at the United States and the shaping of international perceptions. Musharraf
is increasingly emboldened to pursue his deeply entrenched, destabilising
and aggressive policies against India by the US need for Pakistani support
in the global war against Al Qaeda, the Taliban and overall Islamic fundamentalism.
Even though it is well recognised that Musharraf
is playing a double game with the US in its operations against the Taliban,
Washington continues to praise the Pakistani president officially and provide
him financial and military aid. It is indeed hilarious to see American interlocutors
involved in long explanations elaborating Pakistan's importance. Conferring
the exalted status of a major non-nato ally on Islamabad is part of this unqualified
and seemingly unquestioning support. This, in turn, further enables Pakistan
to be intransigent in the ongoing Indo-Pak composite dialogue, and also encourages
it to pursue its low-intensity conflict policy to gain negotiating leverages.
Musharraf is in a hurry to show results at
home because disproportionate resources have been invested in Pakistan's military
machine for too long with little visible result, either in the shape of a
favourable solution of the Kashmir issue or in an improvement in the lot of
the Pakistani people. Furthermore, elections in Pakistan are due within the
next year and General Musharraf is using all and any means to remain in power
and in uniform - both as president and as army chief.
It needs to be underscored that whether or not a civilian government comes
to power in Pakistan, the country's military establishment will continue to
dominate its political process. It is in this context that proxy war will
remain the cornerstone of Pakistani military strategy. A weak and fractious
India suits the Pakistani elite's long-term objectives of preventing India's
emergence as a regional hegemon.
Last October, India had come close to making
concessions to Pakistan over the Siachen dispute, but mercifully held back
under pressure from the Army and, in part, from the strategic community. Such
unilateral concessions would have reinforced the Pakistani belief that pressure
tactics, in the form of state-sponsored terrorism, pay. It needs to be recalled
that India is still paying for its capitulation over the hijacking of Indian
Airlines flight IC-814, which led to the release of Maulana Masood Azhar -
the ideologue who went on to form the Jaish-e-Mohammed, one of the two insurgent
groups responsible for the attack on Parliament in December 2001.
It should be clear from the above that giving
concessions to Pakistan - conceding, for instance, to its proposals on Kashmir
for self-governance, demilitarisation and joint administration, without a
comprehensive overall settlement - would be self-defeating. While these proposals
appear attractive at a cursory glance, they lack the substantive historical,
political and diplomatic insight necessary to resolve the Kashmir problem.
These proposals are aimed at winning the turbulent media war and showcasing
the Pakistani establishment as being reasonable and flexible.
Given this background, the question arises:
does India have any credible options to deter Pakistan from its policy of
cross-border terrorism?
There is a growing realisation in India's
politico-military circles that Pakistan's proclivity to operate at the extreme
ends of the conflict spectrum-i.e. to use both sub-conventional warfare as
well as the threat of nuclear war - has enabled it to escape a well-deserved
punishment for its proxy war and destabilising activities.
There is little doubt that the Indian State
will have to deal with the situation decisively, sooner or later. And the
sooner the better as it would save the innocent lives that are likely to be
extinguished in the near future due to Pakistan's committed policy of offensive,
low-intensity conflict.
Pakistan's military establishment has come
to believe that its nuclear deterrent offers it a shield from behind which
it can continue its proxy war with impunity and escape any retaliatory or
punitive response from India's superior conventional forces. In Islamabad's
perception, India has backed down ever since Operation Brass Tacks in 1987
because of Pakistan's nuclear deterrent capability. This was demonstrated
during the Kargil war when, despite pressing military imperatives, India chose
not to cross either the international border or the 747 km-long Line of Control
(LoC). The same situation obtained during Operation Parakram, the year-long
Indo-Pak stand-off of 2002.
As a consequence, Pakistan has escalated the
proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir ever since the 1990s, secure in the knowledge
that India is unlikely to respond militarily. From the time that the peace
process began in November 2003, along with the cessation of hostilities along
the LoC, Pakistan has been calculatedly calibrating jehadi terrorism against
India, depending upon its own imperatives. Pakistan does, however, anticipate
incremental politico-military coercion and a graduated application of military
power by India in future conflict scenarios. The initiation of hostilities
is perceived to be Kashmir-centric, graduating to deeper operations in the
northern areas, the declaration of exclusion zones by the Indian Navy, together
with Indian Air Force strikes in an escalation that will lead to synchronised,
conventional war.
Pakistan's strategic concepts are aimed at
denying India military dominance by avoiding war through credible conventional
deterrence and, if war is imposed, through terminating it at a position of
relative advantage. Its strategy is based on the triad of deterrence, dissuasion
and offensive low intensity conflict (LIC).
Within this context, the dominant strategy
for Pakistan's military operations is likely to be that of offensive-defence,
i.e. tactically offensive and strategically defensive.
Pakistan's strike capability is built around
its strategic reserves (army reserves North and South). With these alongside,
offensive lic is looked upon as a vital strand of its overall military strategy,
aimed at exploiting both the so-called 'freedom movement in Kashmir', as well
as ethnic dissensions and fissiparous tendencies across the rest of India.
That it is already exploiting these faultlines is evident with investigations
into the Mumbai blasts revealing that disaffected locals were utilised as
couriers and providers of safe houses in the preparation for the attack.
The overall Pakistani military strategy against
India can be summed up as follows:
o Wage offensive lic or 'proxy war' in J&K,
together with support to insurgencies in other parts of the country to destabilise
India. An additional aim is to negate India's conventional edge by tying down
its forces in counter-insurgency tasks. This appears to be having a debilitating
effect on the Indian Army, with increased incidences of psychological problems
as well as chronic ailments like hypertension and blood pressure.
o Prevent escalation through a strategy of
deterrence by denial by attempting to confine hostilities to J&K, while
adopting a strategic balanced posture in other sectors. However, based on
its strategic reserves, which stand greatly enhanced through incremental modernisation,
Pakistan retains the option of either a limited offensive in Kashmir or a
strategic offensive across the international border in a theatre of its choice.
This option, however, has been to some extent neutralised, owing to Pakistan's
need to deploy nearly 80,000 troops in counter-insurgency operations in Baluchistan
and NWFP.
o The "nuclear card" is seen as
a conflict avoidance or war termination strategy by Pakistan's military elite.
Significantly, Pakistan has not doctrinally ruled out nuclear war as a response
to its conventional-force asymmetry with India or in situations of Indian
conventional response leading to saturation levels. Threshold ambiguity remains
an important precept of Pakistan's nuclear doctrine.
o The Pakistani Air Force strategy is also
essentially defensive in nature. Its predominant task is air defence. However,
it can be expected to attempt achieving favourable air superiority over the
tactical battle area through defensive and limited offensive operations. Limited
counter-operations relative to its possible offensive options can also be
expected. Its attempts to seek modern hi-tech fighters, like the F-16s from
the US, are aimed at enhancing its offensive capability.
o Pakistan's navy is following a programme
of modernisation and self-reliance to enhance its monitoring and interdiction
capabilities. The development of the Gwadar port with Chinese assistance provides
it with important naval facilities at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. In a
conflict scenario, the Pakistani Navy is unlikely to seek engagement on a
force-on-force basis. Its primary focus will be to keep the sea-lanes of communication
open and to defend important maritime assets, including vital oil installations
in Karachi harbour. Striking the Indian aircraft carrier, however, will remain
one of its major objectives.
o Pakistan's nuclear policy is centred on
maintaining credible first-strike capability as a deterrence, backed by assured
second-strike capability. As per its doctrinal position, the use of nuclear
weapons is contemplated in scenarios which threaten its existence, sovereignty
and/or national integrity. Hence 'cultivated irrationality', to convince an
adversary of irrational and/or unpredictable behaviour, forms an integral
part of its nuclear doctrinal thinking - in other words, a deadly form of
nuclear poker.
o Lastly, Pakistan's collusive relationship
with China is factored as an important adjunct of its overall military strategy.
Considering this backdrop, have we to accept
that there are no credible means to deter Pakistan from its support to terrorism?
Are we willy-nilly being forced to accede to the Pakistani gameplan of obtaining
concessions on Kashmir which it has not been able to obtain through four wars?
Is there a compulsive need to demonstrate progress on the peace process as
part of India's image internationally as a rising power?
Unless India can raise the cost for Musharraf and can disabuse Pakistan of
the perception that its nuclear deterrence paralyses Indian conventional forces,
terrorism will continue. We must recognise that there is a strategic space
below the nuclear threshold which India can exploit through its superior conventional
power. There is little need to remain defensive about Pakistan's low nuclear
threshold. Simulation exercises indicate that, despite Pakistani rhetoric,
cold pragmatism will prevail in all strategic calculations.
Nuclear deterrence dialectics is a mind game
and all players involved are expected to be rational because of the unacceptable
level of destruction likely to be caused. The gameplan of players like Pakistan
is to use the irrationality card to gain maximum leverage for their limited
nuclear deterrent by resorting to nuclear blackmail at the slightest provocation.
In any conflagration that involves nuclear weapons, it is a widely accepted
axiom that Pakistan stands to lose much more than India.
Notwithstanding this, we need to recognise
that the mindset of the Pakistani elite is likely to remain unaltered unless
some shock treatment is meted out on post-9/11 lines, when Islamabad was forced
to modify its policies towards Afghanistan and the Taliban.
If India's strategic objective is to deter
Pakistan from supporting cross-border terrorism and to counter its coercive
tactics, then India will have to gain meaningful punitive strike capability
in terms of effect-based strikes and the exercise of escalation control. This
can be supplemented by extending moral, diplomatic, political and even covert
support to fissiparous ethnic and other sectarian movements raging in Pakistan,
mirroring its hostile activities in India.
What would be Pakistan's response to India's
punitive strikes against its terror infrastructure? In all probability, it
would be a major shock because such action is not expected from pacifist New
Delhi. In all probability, stung by such an action, Pakistan would respond
through air strikes and ground attacks. It is here that superior Indian integrated
military capability will act as a restraint, as long as India can exercise
escalation control.
If Pakistan undertakes any major military
adventure, even if it were to defy conventional logic and go all out with
its air and ground forces, it will meet its nemesis. Its possible riposte
could be to indulge in nuclear posturing and brinkmanship. A media blitzkrieg
will be used to paint the situation as a nuclear flashpoint in which the international
community must intervene and intercede. But is there a likelihood of the situation
crossing the nuclear threshold? Not really.
Somehow, Pakistani strategists live in the
mistaken belief that the possession of nuclear weapons denies India escalation
control; and that this paradigm has been able to deter conventional conflict
with India. However, Pakistan's 'first use' and India's 'no first use' nuclear
policies need not be taken at face value. The decision to use nuclear weapons
is not an easy one to make, however irrational one might posture as being.
This is particularly so in the face of an assured, retaliatory response, which
would be immediate, debilitating and disastrous. No political dispensation
would justify risking such destruction.
Brigadier Sahgal heads the Centre for Strategic
Studies and Simulation at the USI in Delhi
