Author: Jasjit Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 13, 2002
URL: http://www.indian-express.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=4246
Introduction: How Pakistan's nuclear
strategy went for a six
What India's mobilisation of its
full military power on the borders with accompanying political threats
after December 13 had only partially achieved, Pakistan's nuclear sabre
rattling appears to have completed it.
Except that the developments are
almost entirely in India's favour. Pakistan has climbed down to start putting
an end to cross-border terrorism of which a permanent end to infiltration
is an essential pre-requisite. Equally important, the major powers of the
world now say that this terrorism not only emanates from Pakistan, but
that the ISI is linked to jehadi groups including the banned ones which
perpetrate brutal violence against innocents in India. The crisis is far
from over but some tentative conclusions can be drawn at this stage.
What galvanised the international
diplomacy into high gear was the marked increase in the frequency and pitch
of Pakistan's nuclear threats. These had been held out earlier too. But
the regularity with which this was being done since the second half of
May finally got the world worried. These threats ranged from demonstration
firing of three types of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, General Musharraf
himself holding out nuclear threats and his diplomats drawing up doomsday
scenarios for the benefit of the international community.
What made the current threats more
poignant was India's position that it would maintain its no-first-use nuclear
strategy, and resort to calibrated military operations across the Line
of Control in what Prime Minister Vajpayee termed the 'decisive war' against
terrorism, pointing out that lightening may strike even without (war) clouds
- a metaphorical reference to sudden surgical strikes.
There are two main aspects that
deserve attention. First, Pakistani strategy of nuclear blackmail has produced
results, though not in a manner entirely favourable to Pakistan since it
has had to give up its favourite strategy of terrorism. Historical evidence
shows that Pakistan held out clearly identifiable nuclear threats in 1984,
1987, 1990 and 1994 when no war situations existed and were meant to derive
credibility and legitimacy for its clandestine nuclear programme.
After all a deterrent is value-less
if the adversary does not believe that you even have capabilities! It held
out nuclear threats again in 1999 during the Kargil war and now repeatedly
almost ad nauseam in 2002, when a warlike situation existed. In both cases
its goal was to get the international community to intervene; in the former
case to regularise a new ceasefire line east of the existing LOC, and now
to get international mediation on Kashmir.
Pakistan realised that if India
employed its superior conventional military in a calibrated manner this
would raise the costs of its traditional policy tremendously. While it
threatened strikes with nuclear weapons, it was clear that they would remain
a paper tiger since Pakistan's very survival would then be under question.
This would be a war in slow motion with incremental employment of force.
New Delhi's strategy would be to keep up military pressure for attrition
over time.
Sheer deployments have been costing
the Pakistani exchequer nearly 22 per cent higher military expenditure
(compared to India's 2 per cent increase). Indian military power has remained
far superior to what Pakistan could field, especially in the air and at
sea. Pakistan's goal of holding forth nuclear threats was obviously to
get the international community, especially the US, involved more deeply
in the present crisis.
And in this it has succeeded although
the central issue of such involvement now is terrorism and the risk of
war, not Kashmir. A secondary goal, focused on the domestic audience, was
to provide the facade for the General's retreat from the covert war in
J&K, even if tactically.
However, the realisation would no
doubt soon sink in that while there may be a partial success in tactical
terms, Pakistan's overall nuclear strategy lies in tatters.
Some of Pakistan's perceptive analysts
had cautioned the government about this for quite some time. The thinking
in the Pakistani army for nearly three decades has been that nuclear weapons
would provide an immutable guarantee against any use of superior conventional
forces by India and hence provide the opportunity for its 'low cost' sub-conventional
war through terrorism.
Even the use of elite army troops
in Kargil was premised on the same assumption. The flaw in the strategy
was clear for anyone who cared to examine it. Employment of conventional
military power to achieve discriminate and limited political and military
objectives is feasible by carefully crafting its use so that the adversary
is not hurt excessively at any one moment, but the cumulative effect would
start to tell over time.
Pakistani strategy of 'offensive-defence',
where offensive would be through jehadi cross-border terrorism and assured
defence by its nuclear weapons, failed because it was assumed that India's
options were limited to a full-scale war or a covert war.
The former, it was believed, would
be deterred by a nuclear threat, and the latter would only give greater
legitimacy to its own strategy. But it did not take into account the adversary's
ability to evolve counter options. India's answer was that limited war
with conventional military power is feasible, and winnable below the nuclear
overhang. Except that this would not be the war, limited or otherwise,
that people were used to. This no doubt requires political and military
goals to be aligned toward that end. Dramatic victories and defeats are
relics of history in a nuclear world.
Pakistan will have to reconcile
itself to the reality that its nuclear weapons do not provide the type
of deterrent it had calculated on. It will have to factor in the probability
of a 'salami-slicing' strategy where Indian conventional force could be
applied at a moderate level, in modular form, but spread over time denying
Pakistan an opportunity for a nuclear response which actually would only
jeopardise its very existence. This does not mean the risks of nuclear
weapons have disappeared. All it implies is that we have entered a new
phase in the nuclear scenario where a lot is yet to be learnt.
